


Acceptable Losses

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Feels, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, I Love You, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-12 23:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5686294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are other things it’s too late to say, but it doesn’t matter now.  Words were never his strong suit anyway.  He’d said them the only way he’d ever learned how – by stepping in front of the bullet. He has never spoken it aloud, and now he never will, but Harold Finch will know."</p><p>Immediately post-S4 finale, "YHWH."  John takes a bullet to protect Harold and the briefcase containing the Machine.  When he wakes up from his coma four weeks later - very surprised to find himself not dead - Harold can't even bear to be in the same room with him.</p><p>It takes a long time for John to figure out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [victorias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorias/gifts), [convenientmisfires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/convenientmisfires/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He had drawn these lines so carefully, he had always stayed on the proper side of them, and was it so wrong after all to crave a bit of harmless touch from time to time, a hand on the shoulder, a pleasant evening of lively conversation and good food, the way it had been before? Companionship. Connection. A friend.  
> Surely that was permitted, wasn’t it? He was allowed to ask for that. That was what he meant to say.  
> But that wasn’t what he'd said.  
> And Harold knew it."

In the dark place into which John Reese descends when he snaps into battle mode, there isn’t room for conscious thought.

There’s nothing except what he can sense.  He is a body, not a mind.  The mind slows him down.  In the field, overthinking can kill you.  Instead, his mind goes still.

Everything is still.

No conscious thoughts to crowd out the sensory stimuli flickering through his nerve endings to his brain and filtering back out as muscle impulses.

Hear a sound.   _Step.  Turn.  Fire._

Catch a movement behind the van.   _Step.  Turn.  Turn again.  Fire._

He senses Root at his side.  She’s as highly-attuned as he is, even without the Machine.  They’ve never talked about it – fighting, that is; their dark and bloody histories - the way he sometimes did with Shaw, but he thinks Root goes to her own kind of still place.  She too is good at following orders.  She too knows how to flip her own switch and go quiet so she doesn’t miss a –

_Step. Turn.  Fire._

Just lines of code flying back and forth along synapses and nerve endings between his body and his brain.

Thoughts get in the way.

 _Emotions_ get in the way.

Which is why John can’t turn around.

He’s a step or two in front of Root, covering the front and their right flank.  She takes the left and rear.  They don’t discuss this, there isn’t time for a plan, there’s just the way John takes a step out in front and she responds instinctively to cover his blind spot.

And Harold.

And the briefcase he's holding.

There’s gunfire all around them, and smoke in the streets that makes it difficult to see.  John senses Harold’s fear without having to be told, without Harold speaking a single word.  His conscious brain is deep down in the still place, but his nostrils flicker at the sharp tang of Harold’s sweat and his ears detect the shallow rapidity of his breathing.

The briefcase Harold grips with white knuckles contains one kind of Machine, but John is a machine too.  A lifetime of training has rewired his brain and heart and sense of self to make him the perfect tool for strategic violence.  He had been traveling down those same well-worn tracks for years until everything began to deteriorate – until the cracks in the armor began to show – and while most days he considers that he's more or less put himself back together, there have been new weak spots that he can’t repair.

Jessica was first.  Then Carter.  Then Shaw.  And there’s Root, of course, still not really a friend but a comrade he’s grateful for.  Fusco.  Zoe.  Bear.

Cracks in his armor, people he isn’t supposed to care about but does.

System vulnerabilities.

Bad code.

This is why he steps forward and lets Root fall back to cover Finch.

He can paper over the biggest crack – the one that runs all the way down to the marrow of his bones, like a fault line running through the earth – for a little while at a time, when he needs to; but it’s easier to trust his instincts, to stay sharp, to keep Finch safe, if Finch is behind him.

It’s best this way, when Finch can see John – can take shelter behind his body, can feel protected; can believe, even if such a belief is futile, that John is an iron wall – but John cannot see Finch.

He can hear and sense and smell him, he can detect the vibrations of his movements, but he does not have to look into his eyes.

Because there is always a risk of failure.

There is _always_ a thing that can go wrong.

Miracles, disasters.  Surprises, plot twists, acts of God.  Things that cannot be predicted.

John is a machine in human flesh and one day that flesh will fail and he will step in front of a bullet for Harold Finch and go down.  He doesn’t mind this.  He has always known it.

But it’s easier to bear when he’s not looking at Harold’s face.

It’s easier to think of himself as just a hand wielding a gun.  A body made of stone.  A force, a _thing._

Not a man.

John Reese cannot be a man right now.

He cannot be a living person with a beating heart, who fears things, who _wants_ things.  That way danger lies.  How can he be a machine programmed to die, if needed, for his master, if he remembers that there are things in this world he would miss if he left them behind?

John is ready to die for Harold Finch.  He always has been.

He’d just prefer not to see the look on his face when he does.

* * * * *

Root covers him in an effortless 360 as he reloads.  They’re good together.  It’s not like it was with Shaw (though in fairness, she’d probably say the same; no, she _definitely_ would.  She could not have less of a desire to kiss John Reese if he were a poisonous snake) but they make it work, and it’s nearly seamless.

Nearly.

But Harold stumbles over the body of a fallen Samaritan agent on the ground, and the briefcase drops from his hand.

And this, of course, is the thing that was always going to go wrong, the glitch in the code.  No Machine watching out for them now, nothing She can do from inside that sleek black rectangle sliding across blood-soaked cement away from Finch’s grasp.  Shaw knows him better than Root does, Shaw would have anticipated his movement and adjusted to cover his flank, but Root doesn’t.  Root dives for the briefcase, which means she doesn’t see the shooter on top of the van or the rifle he’s aiming at Finch.

It's like choreography, the way John raises his gun as he dives into the line of fire, one smooth fluid motion.  Graceful and clean, like ballet.  He takes out the shooter, and for half a second - before the hot red pain slices through his side - he thinks it's all going to be okay. 

He realizes very quickly that it isn't.

But he stays calm.  As his vision begins to blur and darken and he feels the terrible thing begin to happen, he allows himself to stay inside that still quiet place.

Sounds fade.

He can hear Finch hyperventilating from somewhere behind him.  Root screams his name, but dully, as though she’s underwater.  He tries to smile at her, to let her know it’s all right.  He can see, as his body sinks to the ground, that she has the briefcase in her hands.

 _Good girl,_ he thinks.  Root will take care of Harold, she will keep him safe, they will rebuild the Machine and they’ll bring Shaw home and they’ll find a way to take down Samaritan.  The sun will rise tomorrow, the world will keep spinning, and John has taken them as far as he can.  

Harold will find another John Reese.  John Reeses are a dime a dozen.  Harold will survive.

In the distant underwater place where he can still hear Root calling, another voice bursts in - two, rather; one human and one canine - and through the blinding pain in his abdomen which is slowly beginning to soften and fade, John wants to laugh.

Fusco and Bear.  Right on time.

He wants to make a joke to Fusco about showing up fashionably late to the party.  He wants to say, “Always gotta make an entrance, don’t you, Fusco?” just so he can provoke his partner into making that teeth-grittingly irritated face.  He tries to speak, but of course nothing comes out of his mouth except the warm metallic taste of blood.

It’s okay, though.  John isn’t worried.

Fusco and Bear hold off the Samaritan agents alongside Root for long enough that John can finally allow himself to close his eyes and sink down into the still dark place - because Fusco got Harold in the car.

_Harold is safe._

“You did good, John,” he hears Carter say – he can’t see her, his vision’s so dark now that he doesn’t know if his eyes are closed or open, but he can hear her clear as a bell.  “You’re a good soldier.”  She’s not underwater like the others, she’s right here beside him, just like she was the last time, and the last thought in his mind before everything goes dark is gratitude.

He did good.

He was a good soldier.  

And it’s like he told her that night in the freezing car – this was always where he was meant to be.

His path was always meant to end right here, amidst chaos and gunfire and screaming.  He took the bullet so they could get Finch in the car - along with the Machine.

_"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."_

The words float past him in the darkness and he wonders for a moment where he's heard them before before it comes to him.

Carter's funeral.

She's right beside him.  She's right here.  She won't leave until it's over.  She promised.

John has fought the good fight.  He has finished the race.

He has kept the faith.

He has done what he always intended to do – die to save Harold Finch’s life – and he’s been granted the only wish he had left in the world:

That the last thing his eyes saw before they closed forever would not be the look of desperate anguish on Harold’s face.

 _Goodbye,_ he says silently.  

There are other things it’s too late to say, but it doesn’t matter now.  Words were never his strong suit anyway.  He’d said them the only way he’d ever learned how – by stepping in front of the bullet.

He has never spoken it aloud, and now he never will, but Harold Finch will know.

* * * * *

It’s sweet and dark down there, in the calm still place inside John Reese, and for the first time in longer than he can remember he feels safe.  There’s nothing left to be afraid of, when you’re about to be dead.  Chaos and noise and light and sound and thought fade away to nothing, even the pain disappears.  You simply let go.  You sink to the bottom of the ocean inside you and then everything is silent.

John lies still on dark, wet pavement, bullet casings and dark puddles all around him.  A scarlet stain blossoms on his crisp white shirt, oddly beautiful, like a great red rose bursting into bloom.  A great many things happen at the same time, but John knows nothing about any of them.  He neither sees nor hears the ambulance.  He’s entirely unaware of hands lifting him off the ground amidst the revival of gunfire, as Fusco’s backup arrives. Heigh ho, the cavalry.  It’s a grand scene, John would have enjoyed it, but he misses the whole thing.

He doesn’t know about the Machine’s distress call either, but then, at this moment, none of them do.  Harold and Root will see the emails, later, they will find the instructions they were sent and they will know what to do.  But as the red rose blooms wider and wider on John’s snow-white chest, he has no idea about the abandoned warehouse in Queens, in the heart of the shadow map, where salvation is slowly making its way.

They’re coming to help.

Every rescued number.

Everyone the Machine has saved.

They follow the directions that were texted to their cell phones and they read and reread the perplexing message over again.

_“You have all been saved for a purpose.  The one that saved you needs you now.”_

So here they are, a citizen army of Irrelevants, on buses and trains and in the back of taxis and on bikes and driving their SUV’s, converging from all over the city onto one single point.

This was the Machine’s last stand, before shutting herself down to prevent Samaritan from taking control.  She protected the irrelevant numbers.  Samaritan would never know these people were connected to each other, or to Harold and the Machine, which meant they were the team’s last best hope.  And Harold would lead them - an army of irrelevant numbers, from schoolteachers to dentists to software designers - to take down Samaritan.

All of these things are happening at the same time, but they no longer matter to John Reese, down here in the quiet darkness.  

Finally, he can lay his burden down - the one he’s been carrying for years, ever since the first time Harold passed him in the hallway and his hand brushed the back of John’s by accident and sent an electric shock through his body.

That was when John knew, suddenly and horrifyingly and without a shadow of a doubt, that the greatest danger to his mission was no longer the Brotherhood, or Elias, or even Samaritan.  It was the soft half-smile when his footstep startled Harold at his computer and he looked up to say “Good morning, Mr. Reese.”  It was the dazzling lightning-quickness of his conversation, leaping from subject to subject, brilliant about everything.  It was the way it felt to watch him at the ballet or the art museum or the cinema – to watch Finch watch something that fascinated him, the way his face lit up and the pitch of his voice rose with enthusiasm.  It was the companionable silence between them when they took Bear out for a stroll or ate dinner together while they worked.  It was the incandescent Harold-ness of him, the spark of that extraordinary mind peering out curiously at you from behind owlish glasses.

So there are two dangers.  There’s the thing that happens to him when Harold’s hand brushes against his, which takes all the strength in his body to carefully swallow down whenever they’re in the same room, and which has only grown more agonizing with time.  But then there’s the far worse second thing: the fear of all the ways this new, terrifying weakness could cause something terrible to happen.  The fear of distraction.  Of losing focus.  Of looking into Harold Finch’s eyes and seeing something there that causes him to hesitate when he most needs to be decisive, to flip the switch back on and make him _feel_ things when he needs to stay inside that battle-ready stillness.

It feels like heaven to set those weights down and step away from them.  It’s so lovely to lay down and let death have you.   _Dying is so easy, compared to living,_ thinks John dimly, and he wonders why so much of human existence is shaped by its fear of this.  Dying is a dark gentle river carrying you downstream towards the sea, wrapped in a warm embrace, silent and still.  Living is harsh and loud and bright and it hurts, everything about it _hurts,_ from the blinding white light piercing through your clenched eyelids to the searing knife-sharp pain in the side of your abdomen that slices through the calm darkness and brings a cacophony of sensations with it, from the smell of stale coffee to the sound of Bear’s footsteps, and . . .

_“John.”_

. . .

_“John.”_

. . .

_“John.”_

. . .

He took a deep, wheezing breath.

“Is he awake?” he heard Root exclaim, with a warm, genuine concern that surprised him - though not half as much as what happened next.

“About fucking time,” said a dry, approving voice from beside him – a voice he’d thought he’d never hear again.  “ _Told_ Finch you were too stubborn to die.  Shame about that suit though.  You know he’s just gonna stick it on your tab.”

“Shaw,” he croaked, the sound coming out in a rush of breath that was scarcely a word.  His lips were cracked and dry, and the dull throb of a bruise on his jaw made it difficult to form words.  He opened his eyes part way against the screaming brightness of fluorescent white light, and sure enough, there was her face.

“What’s up, Sleeping Beauty?” she said around a mouthful of sandwich, grinning widely.  “Miss me?”

John closed his eyes, the snow-white light refracting through the bright sting of tears.

* * * * *

He slept awhile longer, and when he woke again his eyes worked a little better, and his body was more willing to obey him, so he could sit up and listen and speak.  Shaw was there still – with Bear, who hadn’t left her side, and with Root standing guard.  They were in an abandoned hospital in Connecticut, Root explained, where Fusco had driven John from the scene of the shootout with Samaritan.  That had apparently been a month ago.  While John was here, unconscious, Root and Harold had set to work rebuilding the Machine in a new safe house, and though it was only partially operational, it had managed to lead Root to Shaw.

The safe house really was safe, Root assured John, reading the panic in his eyes.  They’d had to do things the old-fashioned way, of course, calling in favors from the army of Irrelevants to borrow cars and cash and phones, in order to get their hands on a set of new forged identities.  But it had worked.  Samaritan was still looking for them, their respite would not hold forever, but there was a better-than-average chance it would hold long enough for Root and Harold to revive the Machine.  They had tended to John, too, it turned out.  There were doctors and nurses and physical therapists among the many numbers Reese and Finch had saved, and so to keep John Reese off the grid while he recovered, Finch had assembled a small army of volunteer medical personnel to tend to him.

“Finch,” John croaked suddenly, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t there, and a look passed between Root and Shaw that he couldn’t decipher.

“Crappy timing,” said Shaw.  “He’s been here day and night for weeks and was turning into a zombie so we finally forced him to go home and actually like see his own bed for once.”

“It’s very sweet,” said Root gaily.  “He sits right there, where Sameen’s sitting, and he sleeps in that chair.  In case you woke up, so you’d be the first person he saw.”

 _Oh no_ , whispers a horrified voice inside of John, staring down in his mind at the two heavy burdens he thought he had finally lain to rest, and realizing he would be forced to pick them back up again.  Even the joy of seeing Shaw back amongst them, her feet propped casually up on his hospital bed as she swigged from a no-doubt-contraband beer and leaned down from time to time to scratch Bear behind the ears, could not silence his panic.

Harold, with his bad leg and stiff back, sleeping upright in a hospital chair for three weeks so that John would see his face the moment he opened his eyes.

 _You should have let me die,_ he thought desperately, and pressed his eyes closed again.

* * * * *

Root called Finch to tell him John had woken up, and he ran every red light to get there.

He rushed into the room as though he had sprinted all the way, eyes shining and cheeks flushed, murmuring “Oh, thank God” as his hand clutched John’s with the desperate gratitude of a drowning man reaching for ballast.  “Mr. Reese.  We feared we might have lost you,” he said fervently.  “I am so very happy we were all proved wrong.”

Harold’s raw, naked joy to see him again was excruciating, his affectionate touch even more so.  John felt his entire self sink downwards under the weight of the burdens he had hoped, by now to be free of.

 _Danger,_ he thought.

But it began to seem, as the days wore on, as though perhaps all his worry had been for nothing.

After that first initial flurry of emotion, Finch retreated inwardly, stiff and quiet and awkward and perhaps the faintest bit cold.  He still traded off shifts at the hospital with Root and Shaw, but he stared at his laptop the whole time and made only the most desultory conversation with John, with the doctors and nurses, or anyone who wasn’t Root – and even that was only if they were working.

Maybe this was good, thought John.  For both of them.  Maybe the near-disaster had forced them both to realize they had badly lost focus and that a little distance was needed for everyone to see the job more clearly.  It wasn’t the same, of course; Finch hadn’t lost focus the way John had, Finch was comfortably immune to the electric shock of their hands touching, so it wasn’t as though they were in the same boat here.  But Harold was fond of John, attached to him, and perhaps he had decided – as John had – that you couldn’t fight a war if you were looking only at the man beside you and not the one in front of you holding the gun.

This was good.

Distance was good.

He could very nearly convince himself, as the weeks passed and his strength returned and his wounds healed, that he was grateful for this.

Nearly.

Kind of.

Almost.

But what was the worst that could happen, really, if Harold Finch never touched him again?

John had gone a very long time without anyone to touch him, even in friendship, and he could do it again if he had to.  He could become that man again, if that was what Finch needed.

If that was the way to keep Finch safe.

He was in the hospital for a total of six weeks, although of course he didn’t remember the first four.  Six weeks stuck in a hospital bed, six weeks for his muscles to atrophy and his senses to lose their sharpness.  He was a dulled blade now, and he needed his edge back.  Harold would need him.

When they finally moved him to the safe house, a cheerful three-bedroom in the suburbs (“Am I on the couch, then?” asked a fuzzy-headed John, trying to do the math and failing until he saw the slightly impish way Root was looking at Shaw and the gruff embarrassed way Shaw was deliberately not looking at Root), Shaw took him in hand for physical therapy and training.  He needed to get strong again, she said, and she wasn’t gonna go easy on him.  She spent every day kicking his ass – at firearms, hand-to-hand, knife skills, strength training and cardio, everything – until his muscles began to slowly wake up from slumber and remember the purpose they’d been trained for.

Little by little, John Reese became John Reese again, but Harold kept his distance.

He was never _unkind,_ he was as mild and polite as he’d always been, but all the intimacy they’d built up over the past few years had vanished behind a steel wall.  He treated John courteously, like a stranger he was pleased to meet, but their hands never brushed by accident and John knew he ought to be relieved but wasn’t.

From time to time Root, accompanied by either Harold or Shaw, ventured back into the shadow side of the city to meet with their contacts and informants.  There was no plan of attack against Samaritan yet, no matter how anxious John was to fire a bullet between Greer’s eyes.  Right now there was simply the process of waking the Machine back up, and all the complicated technical needs that entailed.  It was during one of these trips - after John had spent a month recovering in the safe house - that the thing finally happened.

Root was taking Shaw this time; there was a software programmer whose hard drive they needed, apparently, and he lived in Williamsburg on the second floor above a hipster lesbian bar, so they’d moved into the neighborhood for three days.  To "sell the cover," as Shaw insisted, they were also taking Bear.  Privately, John suspected it was because she didn't want to admit how much she'd missed him and didn't like being away from him that long, but she denied it.  "It's for the cover," she said again.  "Lesbians like dogs.  Or, wait.  Is it cats?  Do they like dogs or cats?"

"I don't know," said Root cheerfully.  "If I meet one, I'll ask her.  By the way, your red bra is still in my purse from last night."

"One of these days I'm gonna murder you for real," muttered Shaw, snatching the bra from Root's hand and stomping off.  Root shrugged it off, magnificently casual, and it was the closest John had come to smiling in a long time.

They left around eight in the morning.  Root was leery of leaving Harold unprotected, but she was the only one.  Harold insisted rather stiffly that he did not need a minder, and John assured Root that his injuries were healing nicely.   Shaw concurred.  “I know he still looks like shit," she told Root, "but he’s getting better.  He hardly embarrassed himself in training at _all_ yesterday.”  Finally, Root sighed and relented.

The moment the door closed behind them Harold commenced avoiding John entirely, his nose buried in his computer all day long.  He answered politely but briefly when John asked him questions, but showed no indications that he planned to make their three days alone any easier by a return to the comfortable conversation they used to enjoy.  “My apologies, Mr. Reese, but I am occupied at the moment,” was the most John got out of him all day. Any time he tried to say more, Harold rebuffed him as politely but thoroughly as if a door had slammed shut.

At a loss, he went upstairs to his bedroom and called Shaw.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she said by way of greeting, “we’ve been gone like four hours.  The dog’s _fine_.”

“That’s not why I called.”

“Awww,” said Shaw fondly.  “Root, he misses you.”

“Is that John?” he could hear Root in the background.  

“Yeah.  I don’t think he trusts me out of his sight with the dog.”

“Because the dog likes you better.”

“I know, I think that’s why.”

“Shaw, listen,” he said.  “Have you talked to Finch today?”

Shaw paused. “Finch?” she repeated doubtfully.

“Yeah.”

“ _Harold_ Finch?”

“Shaw - “

“Harold Finch who's currently _in the house_ with you? Like twenty feet away?  Sitting at his desk?”

“Shaw -”

“He _is_ at his desk, right, he didn’t like run off and disappear or something?”

“Shaw, has he called you?”

“No, he hasn’t _called_ me, why the hell would -”

“Has he - in the last few - has he said anything about me?” John asked, hating himself for how it sounded, for the ghost of a tremor in his voice. Shaw responded with an incredulous snort.

 _“Christ,”_ she sighed irritably.  “No, he hasn’t, but I can put a note in his Trapper Keeper at recess.”

“This isn't a joke, Shaw,” he said, and there was something in his voice that finally silenced her, took all the flip sarcasm out of her tone.  She paused, and waited, letting him go on. “He hasn't spoken to me,” John said, and it was a little more naked than he’d meant to sound but he couldn’t quite keep his voice steady.  “I’m worried, Shaw.  He’s acting really strange.  He can hardly look at me.”

“Course he can't,” said Shaw simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and then maddeningly refused to elaborate further.

“Everything okay?” he could hear Root ask in the background.

“He says Harold's acting weird.”

“As compared to what?” said Root dryly, and Shaw snorted.

“Don't know, he didn't say.”

“Weird can mean a lot of things,” Root observed.  

“Yeah, I think he knows that.”

“Harry’s got a lot on his plate right now.  Tell John to go easy.”

“ _You_ wanna talk to him?” Shaw fired back irritably.

“Not particularly,” said Root.

Shaw sighed.  “Look, I'm in the car and we're like five minutes away from - left here, Root.  Yeah, and then the next right - sorry. Look. You gotta talk to him yourself. We gave you idiots three days, if you can't sort it out in that amount of time, then honest to God, John, I don’t know what to tell you.”

John was startled.  “What are you -”

“Team doesn't work if you two don't work, Reese,” said Shaw flatly, “and you know it.  You boys gotta fix this ‘cause you’re driving us all crazy.”

“Shaw, _what_ \- “

“See you on Tuesday,” she said, and hung up.

John sat for a long time, staring down at his phone, trying to puzzle out what Shaw had meant.  Finally, he gave up, and decided to go find something to do to keep himself from going insane.  So he fell back on his old standby and sat down to clean his guns at the kitchen table.  Then he cleaned Shaw’s.  Then, figuring he might as well take advantage of this rare burst of camaraderie while it lasted, he also cleaned Root’s.  Then he made dinner.  Then he ate it.  Then he watched the news for awhile.  Then he switched off the television.

In all that time, Harold had not spoken to him.  He had not even turned around.  He had gotten up once for tea and once for the bathroom and in both cases had taken the most circuitous route possible to avoid John’s chair.

John watched him for a long moment.  From his vantage point at the kitchen table, he could see through the darkened entryway into the living room, where Harold sat at a vast messy desk, staring intently at the computer.  He took him in – the narrow shoulders with their faint slope, the shape of his skull beneath his close-cropped hair, the faint pinstripe in the wool of his gray jacket (even inside the house, Harold dressed as though he were going to work), the way his hands fidgeted in his lap . . .

And then the penny dropped.

“Keyboard clicks,” said John, his voice harsh and abrupt in the stillness.

“I beg your pardon?” said Harold, palpably startled by the sudden intrusion of sound, as though he’d entirely forgotten John was there.

 _“That’s_ what’s missing,” said John.  “ _That’s_ why it’s been too quiet all day.”

“Mr. Reese, if you don’t mind, I am extremely – “

“You’re not _working_ ,” he snapped, rising from the kitchen table and stepping through the low arch into the living room, “You haven’t touched the keyboard.  You’re just sitting there, looking at the screen.  Avoiding me.”

“I assure you, that is –“

“ _Harold_ ,” John cut him off, the name scraping raw against his throat, and Harold froze.

It was silent for a long time before John spoke again, quieter this time, his voice heavy and sad.  “Why can’t you _look_ at me?” he asked simply, and he watched Harold’s shoulders collapse in his chair.

“Mr. Reese,” he began after a far-too-long pause – he still hadn’t turned around – then cleared his throat and began again.  “I understand that you may well be . . . that is to say, all things considered, I began to feel it prudent to reexamine – or, to put it another way, the increased risk – no, perhaps ‘risk’ is the wrong word.  Under the circumstances, let us say, I felt that – “

“Harold,” John interrupted him harshly.  “I _miss_ you.”

The entire world stopped spinning as the words left his mouth.

The second John heard what he’d said, he wished he could take it back.  This was too raw, too naked, too _much._  He had drawn these lines so carefully, he had always stayed on the proper side of them, and was it so wrong after all to crave a bit of harmless touch from time to time, a hand on the shoulder, a pleasant evening of lively conversation and good food, the way it had been before?  Companionship.  Connection.  A _friend._

Surely that was permitted, wasn’t it?  He was allowed to ask for that.  That was what he meant to say.

But that wasn’t what he'd said.

And Harold knew it.

For a long, long time, nobody moved.  John stood helplessly in the middle of the living room floor, trapped between staying and going, while Harold sat at the computer he wasn’t really using, frozen in indecision about whether or not to turn around.

About thirty seconds later, the problem was solved for them.

Later, they would learn it had simply been a car backfiring in the street.  It had been nothing. They were safe.  But the sound ripped through the silence and flipped a switch inside John’s body, and the old John Reese came roaring back to life as though his strength had never faded even for a moment.  In one swift movement - graceful and fluid again, like ballet, he hadn't lost it - he drew his gun and pulled Harold onto the floor behind the sofa, shielding him with his body.  Even in the heat of his heightened battle-senses, he’d done it carefully and gently, always precisely attuned to the needs of Harold’s body and its old wounds.

They lay like that for a long time, John’s body pinning Harold’s down into the soft carpet.  John felt a heart beating and couldn’t, for a moment, determine whose it was.  Harold was breathing hard, his eyes dark with fear as he stared at John – but dark with something else too, something John was afraid to name in case he was wrong.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, there was a rueful part of himself that thought – _At least it got him to look at me._

After ten minutes with no further sounds, John pulled Harold carefully to his feet and pushed him up against the wall of the kitchen entryway, far from the windows, and drew his gun to investigate.  He returned shortly with the full story, obtained from a cluster of equally startled neighbors, gathered in the street to yell at the man whose car had woken everyone from sleep.

“False alarm,” said John gruffly, holstering his gun. He knew there was nothing to be embarrassed of, he’d done everything right.  But something had stirred up a restlessness in him, a tense discomfort that made him decide it wasn’t worth it, after all, to hash this all out tonight.

“I’m going to bed,” he growled, pushing brusquely past a startled Finch to make his way up the stairs.

“You _died_ , Mr. Reese,” said a low, gentle voice, and it halted John on the fifth stair more swiftly and surely than anything had ever halted him in his life.  He turned to look back down at Finch, who was gazing intently straight at him.  “For two point eight minutes in the middle of the surgery,” Finch went on, his voice devastating in its calmness.  “When they removed the bullet.  You died on the operating table.”

“Guess it didn’t take,” said John, not sure what to do with this and opting for the safe option, to play it off, make a joke, push it far away where he didn’t have to think about it.

Finch did not smile.

“You have always said,” he said to John in a low voice, “that you would give your life for the Machine.  For me.  I accepted this at the outset as the necessary risk factor of an operation of this magnitude.  I simply did not imagine – “ His voice broke off here for a moment, and he appeared to be collecting himself.  John took two more steps down the stairs.  Harold took two steps back, into the center of the living room.  “I did not imagine what it would feel like,” he said softly, “to _watch_.”

“Harold,” said John helplessly.

“I found it . . . difficult to be near you,” Harold went on, as though John had not spoken.  “Ms. Shaw and Ms. Groves were convinced of the likelihood of your survival.  They never lost faith.  Nor, I believe,” he added, with the ghost of a smile, “did Bear.”

“Fusco gave up on me, huh?” said John, trying for a joke again, but it didn’t land, it just made it worse, Harold couldn’t meet his eyes.

“It was me,” he said.  “I was the one.  I was the one who was afraid you would not live.”

“I’m right here, Harold,” said John sensibly, coming down the rest of the stairs and reaching Harold in the center of the room in three long strides.  “Look at me.  Good as new.  Couple new bumps and bruises, and the blow to my ego from having my ass handed to me by Shaw every day for a month, but still.  We made it.  Everybody made it.”

“Mr. Reese, I watched you _die_ for me,” Harold said desperately, “and the thought of enduring that pain again – after all that we – after realizing – “  He stopped abruptly.

John, curious as to the source of Harold’s ever-increasing agitation, stepped a little closer.  Harold moved back. 

“Mr. Reese, I think it would be best to have this conversation at a slightly safer distance.”

“I don’t know what that means, Finch.”

“You are not an acceptable loss, Mr. Reese!” Harold flung at him suddenly, wildly, the words bursting out of him with a forcefulness that took John completely by surprise.  “I entered into this mission knowing that anyone in my life could be placed in danger by the work I do.  And so I, I built a life for myself that was small and self-contained.  I could not permit anyone to matter to me on a personal level too deep for objectivity.  At any time, I might find myself sending them into danger, and I knew it was vital to learn how to grieve and yet move on, to keep the mission alive.”

“You do that, Harold,” said John reassuringly.  He reached out a hand, but Harold flinched and pulled away.  “You did it with Carter.  With Shaw.”

“Not with you,” said Harold abruptly, and John went still.

“What do you mean?” he asked in a low voice, feeling his blood begin to race in his veins, feeling a curious electrical surge pulse through his body, drawing him like gravity closer and closer to Harold, who was pulled back towards him too and could not move away.

“I did nothing,” whispered Harold, as though confessing something shameful.  “For weeks.  Root worked day and night while I did nothing except sit in the chair beside your bed and attempt in vain to repress the memory of watching you fall to the ground with a bullet in your chest.”

“Harold –“

“I lost my way,” he said plaintively.  “I have never lost my way before.  Not like this.  And I thought – when you woke up, finally, after so long, after I had abandoned all hope, I thought, ‘this time things will be different, this time I will be careful.’  I thought . . . I hoped . . . distance – “

John reached out to him again, and this time Harold did not pull away.  He let John rest a hand on his shoulder, solid and strong, and the shadows inside Harold’s eyes began to dissipate at his touch.

“You have stood so many times between danger and me,” whispered Harold.  “To protect me.  To protect all of us.  You are the one who keeps us safe.  And yet without the Machine,” he went on, “without its resources, its knowledge – there is nothing I can do to keep _you_ safe.  Without it I am nothing.”

“With or without the Machine,” John insisted gently, “you are the first good man I ever knew in my life.  With or without the Machine, Harold, I will keep you safe.  I’ll die again if I have to,” he added, trying a third time for a moment of levity, but Harold still didn’t take it.

“Please don’t,” he said softly, and then John couldn’t stand it anymore.  He cupped Harold’s face in his hands, pulled him close, and bent his head to kiss him.

Harold’s first reaction was an astonishment so great it knocked him physically off-balance.  He faltered for a moment where he stood until John’s arms slipped around his back to steady him and back him slowly against the wall.  Once there, able to stand upright again, he moved from surprise to confusion, pushing John away in puzzlement as though convinced there had been some kind of a mistake.

“You’re tired, perhaps,” said Harold compassionately.  “And you are still recovering from a number of serious wounds.”

“Harold –“

“You are kind, Mr. Reese – you have always been kind – but I cannot ask you to – I have no wish –“  He broke off, shook his head abruptly as if to clear it, then looked back at John with the same mask of polite civility he had work every day for the past month.

As if nothing had changed.

“I believe I will go up to bed,” said Harold flatly.  “Goodnight, Mr. Reese.”

John let him get halfway up the stairs before he said it.

“You kissed me back,” he said.  “For a moment.  Before your brain switched back on again.  Before you told yourself it was a bad idea.  You kissed me back.”

“It _was_ a bad idea, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, pausing infinitesimally on the stairs before resuming his climb.  “Goodnight.”

* * * * *

Impossible as it was to believe, the next day was worse.

John slept later than he used to – Shaw’s orders, while his body was still recovering – so he rose around nine to see that Harold had already made breakfast, left a pot of fresh coffee for him, and then disappeared.  His laptop and his favorite mug were missing from the computer desk, indicating to John that he’d barricaded himself into his room.

 _“We gave you idiots three days,”_ Shaw had said.  Whatever the hell that meant.

He made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, and went for a run.  He organized the weapons locker in the garage.  He tried to read for awhile, but books made him think of Harold, and what was the point of enjoying one of Harold’s books if he couldn’t talk to him about it later?  So he threw the book down on the couch.

The sun peaked high in the afternoon sky, then began to slide downwards again, shading the clear cloudless blue with violet, before Harold Finch opened his bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway – where he nearly tripped over John.

“Mr. Reese, what are you doing?” he said, staring down at the man sitting on the floor of the darkened hallway, leaning his head back against the wall.

“I know you’ve got a bathroom in there,” said John, gesturing to the bedroom door, “and your laptop.  But I took a chance on you having to leave the room sometime to eat.”

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Depends,” said John.  “What time is it?”

“Five-thirty.”

“Then . . . a pretty long time.”

“Mr. Reese – “

“Shaw says the team doesn’t work if me and you don’t work,” said John, a little helplessly.  “And you can’t even look at me.”

Harold paused, his hand in the middle of reaching back towards the bedroom doorknob, as if he’d been considering ways to escape.  He looked down at John for a long, silent moment, hesitating, unsure.

“I’m sorry,” said John roughly.  “For whatever it was I did.”

“What you did?” asked Harold in confusion.

“For last night,” said John.  “And for whatever it was that happened before last night.”

Harold stared.  “Mr. Reese, I don’t understand.”

“You’re too angry even to _look_ at me,” said John fiercely, “and I don’t know why.”

“Anger?” said Harold softly, incredulously.  “You think – Mr. Reese, how could you _possibly_ – why on earth would I – “

“We used to be friends, Harold,” he said flatly.  “We’re not anymore.”

Harold stared down at him for a long time, silent and sad, but he didn’t deny it.  Instead, he lowered his body – with considerable effort, navigating around his bad leg – to sit on the floor beside John.

John hadn’t turned on the switch for the hallway lights, so they sat there in the fading light, side by side, and watched through the high window over the stairs as the sun faded below the horizon and cast long shadows on the walls.  They sat there without speaking as the world grew dark around them.  It was a long, long time before John finally spoke.

“It’s a surprise, when you really think about it,” he said thoughtfully, “how much easier dying is than living.  Or at any rate, it was to me.”  Harold didn’t say anything, but shifted slightly so he could see, in the dim light of the moon and the streetlamps outside, the dark-and-light movement of shadows across John’s face.  “Carter was there,” he went on unexpectedly.  “Like she was before.  Like she knew.  I thought she’d come back for me.  And I felt safe in that place, it was the safest place I’d ever been in my life, because there was nothing left for me to be afraid of.  Root had the briefcase and Fusco would get you to safety and you’d find another hitter – or you’d get Shaw back – and everything would be all right.  I was . . . happy is the wrong word.  Peaceful, maybe.  At peace.”

 _"'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,'"_ said Harold, almost absentmindedly, and John felt his heart stop beating.

"Yes," was all he could say, devastated at how simply and clearly Harold had always been able to read him.

“That bullet would have struck me if you hadn’t stepped in front of it,” Harold pointed out.

“I know.”

“John,” he asked in a puzzled voice, “did you _want_ to die?”

“I wanted to keep you alive.”

“Forgive me, but that’s not what I asked.”

“I did,” said John honestly.  “In that moment?  There on the ground?  Yeah.  I did.  I was ready.  Once I knew you were safe, I just . . . wanted it to be over as fast as possible.  I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much, was all.”

“Do you wish you were dead now?” asked Harold, and there was no judgment in his tone, nothing invasive.  He simply wanted to know.

“I don’t know anymore, Harold,” said John in a hollow voice, as he looked out the window and watched a point of light move through the stars.  Airplane, maybe.  He’d always liked flying at night.  He felt a pang of envy for all those people, sitting there with their magazines and their headphones and their bags of peanuts, looking out the window at the night sky.  People traveling to someplace new, sure, people departing, but also people coming home.  Sitting in their airplane seats and drinking their ginger ale as the people they loved, the places they loved, moved irrevocably towards them at thousands of miles per hour.  It must be nice, thought John, to be somebody like that.  Somebody with at least one fixed point on their compass.

John didn’t have that.

If Harold Finch couldn’t look him in the eye, than John Reese didn’t know which way North was anymore.

“Shaw’s right,” John said flatly.  “There’s something broken between us.   _I_ broke it.  A long time ago.  It’s my fault, I thought I could . . . I tried my best to, I don’t know, just push through it.  There were things I could do to make it easier -"

“The way you stepped forward during the gunfire,” observed Harold gently.  “And allowed Ms. Groves to fall back, next to me.”

 _Of course,_ thought John. _Of course he knew._

“It’s harder when I can see you,” John found himself admitting.  “When I’m watching you to make sure you’re all right.  I’m better when I can just . . . look forward.”

“Yes,” agreed Harold thoughtfully.  “I sometimes feel the same.”

“You wanted distance,” said John.  “Last night.  That’s what you said.  That you cared too much for objectivity.”  Harold nodded.  “Me too.  That’s why the bullet was a relief.  Because at least that one, I knew I could stop.  The next one I might not be so lucky.  You need someone who can protect you.”

“You have _always_ done that,” Harold insisted.  “You have never let me down, Mr. Reese.  You have never failed me.”

“I can’t protect you from _me_ ,” said John desperately.  “From my own weaknesses.”

“Everyone has weaknesses, Mr. Reese.”

“I didn’t step in front of the briefcase,” John said, abruptly, out of nowhere, and Harold stared.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“When you fell.  When you dropped the briefcase.”

“Ms. Groves retrieved it.”

“But if she hadn’t been there,” said John.  “If I’d had to choose.”  Harold looked at him then, really looked at him, his kind eyes drawn and tired, and he leaned his own head back against the wall too.  “You taught the Machine that all human life was equal,” John reminded him.  “That it should never choose to value one life less than another.  That’s dangerous, and destructive.”

“Yes,” said Harold.

“But it’s dangerous the other way too,” John pointed out.  “Did you warn it about _that_?”

“Mr. Reese – “

“I would have let it go,” said John in a quietly devastated voice.  " _That’s_ why you’re angry.  Because I couldn’t save both, and I chose you instead.  I _don’t_ value all human life equally, Harold.  I value yours more.”

Harold let out a long, shaky breath.  

"I'm not angry," he said.  "I feel, in fact, very much the same."  John looked up at him, startled.  “When I believed that we had lost you, I found that notion . . . unbearable.  I was unable to go on.”  He closed his eyes, then.  John watched him.  “I am not a man who has ever felt particularly tethered to the world,” Harold went on, struck by the sudden need to attempt to explain himself.  “Friends.  Relationships.  Love.  I find myself, more often than not, tempted to avoid such complications.  To avoid, as you said, opening oneself up to weakness.  And so, as much as I care for this team, as dear as all of you are to me, I was stunned by what I saw in myself as I watched you in that hospital bed.  No, more than that.  I was afraid.  I have known losses before, Mr. Reese.  Great ones.  I had not thought of myself as a person who formed attachments to people and things I could not live without.  And yet I was _undone_ by your loss.  When the Machine needed me most, I could not be what it needed.  There was room for nothing in my mind except to wonder if you would ever come back to us.”

“I _did_ come back,” John protested, suddenly and inexplicably furious with him.  “I’m here.  I’ve _been_ here.  For a _month_ , Harold.  And two weeks in the hospital before that.  And _nothing_ ,” he said, with a hopeless gesture. “ _Nothing_.  Not a _word_.”

“Under the circumstances, I thought it best – “

“Harold, I can’t do this anymore,” said John wearily.  “If you don’t want me the way I want you, just say so.  I’m a grown man.  I can take it.  What I can’t take is the silence.”

 _“Want_ me?” said Harold blankly, his eyes wide and staring.  He was looking at John with utter astonishment, as if he had never seen him before in his life.

“Yeah,” said John, puzzled.

“What do you mean?” asked Harold, a little desperately.  “What can you possibly _mean_?”

John stared back.  “I thought you - Harold, what did you _think_ I was talking about?”

“I believed that we were speaking of – “ Harold broke off.  “There has been a variety of intimacy between us,” he tried again, haltingly.  “A partnership.  Friendship, yes, but also something with a bit more . . . gravity than that.  The shared nature of our mission.  I understood that you were speaking of a kind of, I suppose, a closeness, an affection, that springs from that.  That you have come to, in some small way, _care_ for me.  Brothers-in-arms, one might call it.  Comradeship.”

 _"Comradeship,"_ John repeated incredulously, then leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.  He felt a laugh bubble up from inside him, a harsh, unhappy one with no real amusement in it.  The irony of it, after everything that had happened.

“Mr. Reese?”

“I literally _stepped in front of a bullet_ to avoid this moment,” he told Harold ruefully.  “But you’re going to make me say it out loud anyway.”  He exhaled deeply, his shoulders crumpling and sagging forward, and he suddenly looked ten years older and very, very tired.

“I don’t – “

“Harold, I’m in _love_ with you,” said John, his low voice so gruff he sounded almost angry – though whether at Harold, or the situation, or himself, Harold didn’t know.

The silence that followed was awful.

“You’re . . . what?” Harold finally managed to say, timidly.

“Don’t make me say it again,” said John wearily, closing his eyes.

The silence went on for an eternity.

“Your mind and body have been under a considerable degree of strain,” Harold began gently.  “Under the circumstances, I understand perfectly why – that is to say, last night, when you – “

And finally, John decided he’d had it.

“This didn’t just _happen_ , Harold,” he snapped.  “I’m not high on painkillers.  It’s not PTSD.  You can’t explain this away as the delusion of a man who died for two minutes on an operating table.  This isn’t _new._ This is what it’s _always_ been.”

“John –“

“I don’t feel this way because I took a bullet to the chest, Harold,” he said roughly, and Harold froze.  “I took a bullet to the chest for you _because I feel this way_.”

Harold looked stricken, his eyes wide and dark and miserable.  He stared at John for a long, long time without speaking.  Then he struggled to his feet – wincing at the stiffness in his leg but refusing John’s help – and moved away back towards his bedroom door.

 _“Harold,”_ pleaded John desperately.

“I am sorry, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, his voice shaky with emotion.  

“Please don’t walk away from me.”

“I have no wish to - I simply – I need a moment.  I just – I need to – “

But he didn’t finish the sentence before he closed the door behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “'How dare you,” said Harold unexpectedly, and John blinked in astonishment, startled. 'After everything – after all these years – to hold your own life so cheaply. To think that I would value you so little that I could watch you die, because of me, and carry on without you.'”

An hour passed. Then two.

John didn’t move from his spot in the hallway.  Couldn’t have even if he wanted to.  He was rooted to the spot.  He was more stuck than he’d ever been in his life.  He stared out the dark window, his mind a blank, looking at the stars.  He saw another plane go by, and he thought about the people on board again, thought about parents and children and husbands and wives.  

He thought about people going home.  

He thought about the way Root’s whole body had crumpled as the elevator rose and led them away from Shaw, who had stayed behind to protect them.  

He thought about Carter and Fusco, and their children.  

He thought about Harold and Grace Hendricks.  

He wondered what it would feel like, that sensation of belonging, of _home._

He thought about it for a long, long time before he realized – of course – that he already knew.

It was Harold’s face, as he looked up from the computer when he heard John’s footsteps enter the room, smiling and pleased to see him.  Harold at the table in the library, surrounded by stacks of books and drinking a cup of tea.  Harold at his side as they walked the streets of Manhattan with Bear.  Harold swooning over lightweight pinstriped merino wool stacked by the bolt in the mahogany-and-brass workroom of his favorite tailor, holding fabric samples up while John sighed with feigned impatience and grumbled “Looks the same to me” because he knew it would annoy Harold into laboriously explaining the difference between slate gray and dove gray and John wanted to listen to him talk.

He could survive it – eventually – if Harold did not love him back, John thought.  But he could not survive Harold being this close and this far away at the same time.

Something would have to be done.

He entered the bedroom without knocking, and stopped short.

Harold was lying on the bed, his glasses askew, his hair and suit rumpled, and he was _crying._

 _"Harold,”_ John murmured helplessly, and Harold looked up.  For a long time they simply stared at each other.  John could feel his heart begin to accelerate in his chest, his breathing coming light and quick, as Harold looked at him, streaks of tears shining on his face.  Behind his glasses, his eyes were wet and red; he’d been crying for a long time.  The thought of it shattered John’s heart into a thousand pieces.

He had come in here to do this, to get away from John so he wouldn’t see.

Suddenly wondering if he had made a terrible mistake, John turned to go, to leave Harold in the privacy he’d clearly come in here to seek.  But the moment his hand touched the doorknob, Harold spoke.

“Stay,” he said, a faint flicker of pleading in his voice, and John’s heart stopped.

“You –“ He swallowed hard. “You really want me to?” Harold nodded, unable to say anything more. The desolate sadness etched on Harold’s wet, miserable face did something to John, waking all his protective instincts back up again. He moved slowly, tentatively over towards the bed; Harold shrank back from him the slightest bit, but he allowed John to sit down beside him. Carefully, with gentle hands, John pulled off Harold’s glasses and set them down on the bedside table. Then he reached into the pocket where he knew Harold always kept his handkerchief – trying to keep his touch gentle, unthreatening, trying not to think about the skin beneath those layers of fabric – and he leaned down to dry the tears from Harold’s face. Harold closed his eyes and let John tend to him, and a flush of warmth flooded John’s body, surging and triumphant. _This could be enough,_ he thought. He could live like this. If Harold didn’t love him back – but Harold let John love him, like this.

In the field, it would be dangerous. More so, maybe than before. But for now, for tonight, just to know that Harold wanted John near him . . that John was permitted to touch him, to stay close, to see Harold vulnerable and be trusted to protect him . . . maybe, it could be enough.

“Thank you,” said Harold in a faint voice.

“I’ve never seen you cry before,” said John before he could stop himself, and he wasn’t quite able to keep the anguish out of his voice. He was trying, he was trying so hard, he had told Harold that he loved him and Harold had physically fled the room, so they were taking baby steps here, he would have to be careful, he would be so careful not to hurt Harold or frighten him again. But it was impossible for him to be this near to Harold and not love him so desperately that the thought of his suffering caused John actual physical pain.

“Yes.  Well,” said Harold, attempting to compose himself, allowing John to carefully help him sit up on the bed. “It is hardly a regular happenstance.  I cannot recall the last time it occurred. I must ask your forgiveness,” he said, looking seriously and intently at John where he sat beside him on the bed. “You said something quite . . . momentous, and I – it felt unendurable, at that moment, to permit you to see me in this state. I felt unable to bear someone else’s presence while I – while I was – Well. You see. But I confess I gave no thought to the pain it must have given you for me to . . . and just after you had said – “  He stopped, took a deep breath. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am not at my most articulate in discussing matters of such emotional weight. But there are . . . things to say.”

John nodded, composing his face, modulating his breathing. It was coming, then. Harold was steeling himself to tell John no, and John had to sit quietly and let him. He tried to look neutral. He tried to slow his own racing heart. He waited, while Harold collected his thoughts to speak.

“You wanted to know why I . . . retreated from you,” said Harold, in a more collected tone. “Why it has been so difficult, over the past few months, for me to take the same comfort in your presence – in our friendship – the way to which we have both become accustomed. I miss it too,” he added ruefully, startling John. “You believed it was because you had, in some way, failed me. You have been punishing yourself for choosing to save my life over the Machine, with its potential to save hundreds of lives. You were angry at yourself, because without Root the Machine might have been lost. And for this, you blame yourself. But John,” said Harold gently. “The Machine was not at risk because you were weak. The Machine was at risk because _I_ was weak.”

John stared at him.

“I lack the physical stamina and conditioning which makes you and Ms. Groves and Ms. Shaw so formidable in combat,” he said, confessing it like it was a shameful sin. “If I had not fallen and dropped the briefcase, none of this would have happened.”

“Harold –“

“You would have seen the sniper on top of the van,” Harold pressed on relentlessly. “As would Ms. Groves. We would have made it to the end of the street together in time for Detective Fusco’s arrival. All of us. Unscathed. Together. We would have gone straight to the safe house. We would have begun rebuilding the Machine right away. I would have been able to work, instead of watching and worrying at your bedside. We lost four precious weeks of time in which I was unable to do my job, and you were almost killed. Because of me, Mr. Reese. Because I failed to be strong when you all needed me most.”

“You’re blaming _yourself_ for this?”

Harold opened his hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender. “Who else is there to blame, Mr. Reese?” he asked. You almost died.” His voice began to shake and his eyes shone bright with tears again. “You almost died because of me.  No, you _did_ die.  For two point eight minutes, you _died._   For me.”

“Harold,” said John gently, “we both knew that was always a possibility. I knew that when I took this job. I was always ready.”

 _“I_ was not,” said Harold, with a startlingly raw flash of emotion, and John stared at him. “You asked me,” Harold went on haltingly, “if I was . . . angry at you. I denied it. I suppose I was unwilling to admit the truth. It felt cruel, somehow, with the weight of the burdens you were already carrying. But the truth is that I was. I was more angry than I have ever been in all of my life.”

“Harold –“

Tears began to shimmer at the corners of Harold’s eyelids again as John clenched his jaw desperately, begging him _Please don’t cry, please don’t cry._

“In all the time I have known you, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, “this is the first and last selfish thing I have ever known you to do.”

John stared at him blankly. “Selfish?” he asked, entirely at a loss.

Harold nodded.  “If that bullet had killed you,” he said, “you would have gotten exactly what you wanted. You would have died to save me, the way you always meant to do. And you never paused to ask yourself,” he said, his voice heated, “what would have happened afterwards. What would have happened to _me_.”

“You would have found another hitter,” said John. “Even if Shaw hadn’t come back, you’d have found someone else. To keep the work going.”

“How _dare_ you,” said Harold unexpectedly, and John blinked in astonishment, startled. “After everything – after all these years – to hold your own life so cheaply. To think that I would value you so little that I could watch you die, _because of me_ , and carry on without you.”

“Harold –“

“After all these years, John Reese,” said Harold heavily. “After everything we have been through – to realize that you do not truly know me at all.”

“Harold, I don’t –“

“None of it _matters_ without you,” Harold shot back at him, almost harshly, and John stared at him. “You think you are a tool to be used and discarded once its function has been served. You think it is only the things that you _do_ which make you valuable to me – and not who you _are_.”

And then he did something extraordinary, something he’d never done before. He reached out his hands and laid them, just for a moment, on the soft gray cotton of John’s t-shirt – causing John to swallow hard – before sliding them tentatively around John’s back. Instantly, without a thought, John’s own arms wrapped strong and close against him, pulling him close against his chest and leaning down to rest his head on top of Harold’s own.

For a long, long time, that’s all it was.  They just held each other.  The house was still and silent and the room was pleasantly dark, lit only by a soft golden lamp, and they both felt as though their bodies had been cold for longer than they could remember and were slowly growing warm again for the first time.

Nobody who wasn’t a doctor, or Bear, had touched John in a long time.

 _Harold_ hadn’t touched him in a long time.

Harold shifted a little on the bed, curling up closer inside John’s arms, and his shoulders began to tremble the slightest bit, as John realized in agony that Harold was crying again. John reached down gently and lifted off Harold’s glasses, then pulled him back tightly, and Harold sank gratefully into him. Underneath the way his heart ached for Harold’s sorrow, there was a small, disloyal surge of fierce joy at the pleasure of being permitted to hold him like this. To comfort him like this. That there was something Harold needed, and John could give it to him. He drank it in, the feel of him, the smell of him, the way Harold’s nose pressed into his chest, the echo of soft wet sniffles as Harold leaned into him and let himself cry.  John’s hands were flat and strong against Harold’s back, and he felt Harold soften and melt and dissolve into him with perfect trust, and a rush of joy filled his chest, like something shattered forever had been unexpectedly repaired.

 _I can bear it,_ thought John firmly, _I can bear it as long as we have this.  As long as I have him in my life.  Even if he never –_

And then that train of thought abruptly crashed to a halt because Harold’s hands were in his hair, pulling his head down, and then Harold kissed him.

John’s body responded before his mind did.  Before he was even able to form the astonished thought – _Harold Finch is kissing me_ – his mouth fell open beneath Harold’s lips, drawing him in eagerly, hungrily.  They sat there on the bed, curled up in each other's arms, mouths locked desperately together, their breath coming fast and shallow.  John felt dizzy by the time Harold finally pulled away, trembling and hot and cold all over as though he’d been struck by a sudden fever.

“You meant it, then,” said Harold unexpectedly, his voice ragged with emotion, and John stared in puzzlement. “What you . . . what you said, before. It was true.”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“I must confess there is still a great deal about this that I don’t understand,” said Harold, a little timidly.  John’s hands dropped to his waist, holding him close enough to breathe him in but far enough apart that they could look at each other.  “I was unaware that you – that your personal, shall we say, inclinations – that is, I would never have expected, given your past relationship history – with women – and remarkably attractive women, at that – oh dear, I’m afraid I’m making rather a bad job of this – “

“It’s never come up before,” said John, a little wryly. “I was as surprised as you are.”

“Then you – then you’ve never – “

“It’s just you, Harold,” John murmured.  “It was always just you.”

“But you,” began Harold faintly, “but Jessica –“

John shook his head.  “It wasn’t like this,” he said simply, and those four words told Harold Finch everything he needed to know about why John had been so devastatingly ready for death to take him, and so curiously ambivalent when it hadn’t.  The loss of Jessica had very nearly broken John; that his feelings for Harold were somehow, inexplicably, bafflingly, _stronger . . ._

“ _That’s_ why you’re afraid,” breathed Harold, and John closed his eyes and nodded.  “Every time a new number comes up,” he went on gently. “Every time I walk into danger without you. Every moment that a new enemy shows its face and you don’t know where I am. Every day.”

“Yes,” said John simply. “Every day.”

“But John,” he said, in a low voice threaded with both affection and astonishment.  “How could you possibly not have seen that I felt the same way?”

John’s eyes flew open and he stared, stunned into stillness.

“You step in front of the bullet every time,” said Harold.  “And because that is your job, I am compelled to allow you to do so.  But if you think it is something easy for me to watch – if you believe yourself so expendable that you could simply be _replaced_ if I – "  He swallowed hard.  "If I _lost_ you . . . “

“Harold,” pleaded John, bending his head down to rest his forehead against Harold’s, closing his eyes.  “Will you just _say_ it?”

“I love you, John,” he said simply, and John’s heart turned over inside his chest.  “I have for some time, though I confess I was unaware, until I saw you on the operating table, exactly how much.”

And that was the last thing either of them said for awhile.

The moon rose, the earth turned on its axis, time passed, life went on in the quiet night world outside the windows of their house, as they kissed each other like neither of them had ever kissed anyone before.  Harold took the lead, rather unexpectedly, pressing lightly against John’s chest to lower him down onto the mattress, then sinking down on top of him. His weight was sweet and comforting on top of John’s body, and John felt himself dissolve, going soft and pliant beneath him. In all his life, nothing had ever felt more like home to John Reese than the way Harold’s mouth opened beneath his, fitting perfectly together.  His lips were fuller than John would have thought, and impossibly soft, and the way they opened and closed against John’s mouth kindled the warmth inside John into a wildfire.

Then Harold’s lips drifted, from John’s mouth to his cheek, and from his cheek to his jaw, and then lower, until he reached the hollow between John’s throat and collarbone, and pressed a kiss there, and John moaned.

The moan stopped them both short.

Neither of them had thought this far ahead.  Neither of them had been aware, as their bodies softened and melted together, as their kisses warmed the air swirling around them until it pulsed with an electrical charge of its own, as they pressed their bodies together on the bed, that the kiss had taken them by the hands and was leading them somewhere.  

They had no idea where they were going, until they arrived.

 _“Oh,”_ said Harold, in wide-eyed astonishment, lifting his head to look at John. Experimentally, he kissed John’s throat again, in the same place, and once again John could not restrain a low moan. A third kiss, and the moan was accompanied by a reflexive lifting of John’s hips, ever so slightly, off the mattress and into Harold’s body. “Oh,” said Harold again, softly. “Oh. I see.”

 _“Harold,”_ John pleaded, and something flickered to life inside Harold Finch’s eyes, a giddy, warm joy that John had never seen before. Then suddenly the soft, insistent mouth at his collarbone was joined by fumbling hands at his belt buckle and the heavy pant of Harold’s aroused breathing and John began to feel dizzy.  “Harold,” he repeated, “I want – please, I want - “

“Yes,” agreed Harold, pulling John to his feet as the belt came free.  “So do I.”

There were hands everywhere, for awhile after that, clumsy and hasty, fumbling with buttons and zippers and tangling in sleeves, but in the end they got there.  John looked at Harold for a long time, naked except for a pair of surprisingly luxurious silk boxers (though it shouldn’t have been surprising, given the attention to detail in everything else Harold wore).  His skin was pale, but not unpleasantly so.  It looked soft, as though it would feel like heaven beneath John’s mouth and hands.  There were a few scars on his chest, and a great many on his spine.  He carried himself straight and tall, and that was unexpected.  John would have thought, once naked, that he’d be shy, somehow.  But he wasn’t at all.  He was very calm.  He looked John up and down, and John could feel Harold’s eyes savoring him, taking him in.  It was like being touched all over.  He could feel the pressure of Harold’s gaze, could feel it flicker warmly all over his skin, and he closed his eyes and sighed.

“I should like very much to touch you, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, and John realized with a fierce clench of desire and hunger in his gut, that Harold was not asking but telling.  Harold was taking command.

John nodded, helpless to resist, and Harold stepped in towards him, running curious hands up the rising and falling planes of John’s chest.  When his fingers brushed John’s nipples, he inhaled sharply, and Harold smiled.  He pinched the nipple again, this time deliberately.

_“Harold.”_

“Shhh,” murmured Harold, and then he took John’s nipple into his mouth.

The erection John had been fighting since the moment Harold’s lips touched his own became suddenly unignorable, to both of them.  It pressed hot and hard against Harold’s thighs, seeking relief in friction.  Harold moved closer, switched sides, wrapped his mouth lovingly around the other nipple, and shifted his stance to place his good leg between John’s thighs.  It must have been deliberate – it _must_ have been – because when John’s hands gripped Harold’s hips, fingertips brushing against the gossamer navy blue silk waistband of his underwear, and moved to grind his cock against Harold’s flesh, Harold didn’t move away but moved in.  John’s cock was straining inside his black cotton briefs, desperate to break free, yearning for relief, and Harold’s small shifts in movement to allow John to grind his pelvis fruitlessly over Harold’s thigh made everything both better and worse.

John felt Harold’s hands slide over his shoulders and down his back, lower and lower, and the tiny part of his mind that could still form conscious thought wanted to laugh.  It had only been a few hours ago when he was ready to beg for human contact as simple as the touch of Harold’s hand on his, and now Harold’s hot palms were cupping his ass, pressing, stroking, kneading, pulling him close, and the already red-hot pressure between his thighs roared up further and further with each touch.

John could not possibly allow himself to come this way, dry-humping Harold’s leg like an animal – no, that was unfair, even Bear had more class than this – but he didn’t know what else to do, so desperate was he for anything resembling relief as Harold’s lips sweetly mouthed his nipples, back and forth, one and then the other, kissing and suckling lightly and circling them with his tongue, until John began to feel weak.

“Please,” he murmured, his voice shattered with desire.  “ _Please,_ Harold.”

Harold did not say anything in response. But he tugged off his silk boxer shorts and stepped gently out of them. John gulped, unable to keep his eyes from flickering downwards, unable to believe this was happening, feasting his eyes hungrily on Harold’s cock - rosy and smooth-skinned, longer than John had expected, and somehow graceful, like everything else about Harold.  His entire body ached to take it in. Then all conscious thought flew out the window as Harold’s fingers clutched the waistband of John’s cotton briefs and the sudden sensation of warm air alerted him to the fact that he was naked too.

“Come to bed with me, John,” said Harold simply, and held out his hand.

Underneath the covers, they lay with their heads sharing one pillow, kissing like teenagers for a long time.  John thought he would never grow tired of the feeling of kissing Harold.  He had been starved for touch for so long - not just since he woke up in the hospital a month ago, but all his life - and he wanted to soak up everything Harold offered him.  Their hands drifted over each other’s naked bodies, resting from time to time on the other’s heavy hard cock for a moment, but never for too long.  It was warm beneath the thick blankets, warm and _safe,_ it was just like it had been when the bullet in his side carried John down that dark silent river, except that he was alive now, and Harold was here.  He hadn’t known it was possible to feel like this – to feel sheltered, free of burdens – without having to die to get there.  But the way Harold smiled when he stroked John’s cheek, the way his hands slid up and down John’s thighs with wonder and delight, the way his lips parted eagerly beneath John’s own – these things were like a wall of iron rising up around them, not between John and Harold, but between them and the world.

John hadn’t known it was possible to feel safe with somebody else on this side of the wall.

“Have you ever done this before?” Harold murmured curiously. “With a male partner, I mean.” John shook his head. “Nor have I,” said Harold, and his mouth flickered into an unexpectedly mischievous smile. “How fortunate,” he added rather impishly, “that we have another thirty-six hours before Ms. Groves and Ms. Shaw return. I believe that is plenty of time for us to become proficient enough for discretion. I hardly trust my own powers of restraint to maintain a moderate decibel level the very first time.”

 _“Harold,”_ John exclaimed, a fiery combination of embarrassment, amusement, shock and desire winding its way through him.   This was a new side of Harold Finch – Harold taking the lead, Harold kissing him, Harold’s elegantly refined dirty talk, _Harold coming on to him_ . . . It astonished him with its force, the depth of his desire. The love and devotion, he had permitted himself to at least partially acknowledge, masking it to himself as fealty, brotherhood, friendship. He could let himself take it out of its box into the light from time to time, if he called it by a safer name.  But lust was entirely forbidden. Once that door was opened it could never be closed again and John could no longer pretend this was something other than what it was. So when he watched Harold’s fingers fly lightly over his keyboard, graceful and quick, he did not permit himself to think about those hands on his body. When he watched Harold sip a glass of wine, savoring it in his mouth, he did not permit himself to think about how it would feel to kiss him. He had worked so hard for so long to press those thoughts down into the darkness and lock them far away. And yet here they were, Harold and John in bed together, against all probability, and Harold was saying to him, in his magnificently aristocratic Harold way, that they had a day and a half before the girls came home for Harold to be as loud as he wanted while John made him come.

“We should pace ourselves, I think,” Harold said contemplatively. “This being the first time. I believe lengthier preparations may be in order for, what one might refer to as ‘the main course – ‘”

“Oh, God, Harold . . .”

“. . . but I rather believe we can manage the preliminaries with very little assistance,” he continued brightly, as though John hadn’t spoken, and the thought that unstitched John Reese entirely in this moment as Harold kissed his way down John’s chest was the realization that _Harold was having fun._

All along, he had had this to offer Harold, he had been holding onto something that made Harold happy, he could have been making Harold this happy for _years_ , but he’d been too frightened to step out of the shadows and tell him the truth.

 _Thank God for that bullet,_ John thought unexpectedly, sinking into the pillows and closing his eyes with a dreamy sigh as Harold’s impossibly soft lips wrapped around the tip of his cock.

It wasn’t just that nobody except John had touched John’s naked body in a long time. It wasn’t just the feeling of hot liquid softness, the delicate wet sounds that sent shivers down his spine. It wasn’t just how good it felt to have a mouth on him. It was _Harold._ Everything he did, he did like Harold. It was the inquisitive way his probing, exploratory tongue traced every ridge and curve of John’s cock, as though familiarizing himself with new terrain. It was the way he could feel Harold _learning_ him. It was the way he could feel him testing, prodding, mapping the connections between stimulus and response. Harold was, delightfully, experimenting on him – what would happen if he flicked lightly at this spot just _here_ , or drew his lips together like _this_ and sucked lightly, or pressed hard with the flat of his tongue _here_ – ah, there it was, a louder, more violent groan from John, telling him that this was the spot he liked best. He adapted quickly, he learned what John liked, filed the data away and adjusted accordingly. It was intoxicating to have someone focused so intently and thoroughly on your pleasure. It would have been impossible for John not to let himself come. He tried, though; he held out as long as he could, gritting his teeth, clenching his fists, until Harold opened his mouth and the wet heavy cock slid over his tongue and back out into the air (startlingly chilly after the damp heat of Harold’s lips) and looked up at John in puzzlement.

“Mr. Reese,” he said in a chiding tone, “why on _earth_ are you resisting?”

“I don’t want to – Harold, I can’t – I’m about to –“

“Good,” said Harold, smiling. “That was my intention.”

“But I, you, I don’t – in your mouth – “ John’s face was flushed hot with mortification at the idea of having to say to Harold, _Please, I don’t want to come in your mouth if you don’t want me to come in your mouth but I’m losing the ability to control it._

 _“Oh,”_ said Harold, understanding suddenly. “If that’s all. I assure you, Mr. Reese, it’s quite all right.” And before John could protest, he had swallowed John up again – deeper than before, this time, nearly all the way in – and he began with gentle, coaxing strokes, to pump his cock from the base upwards. John groaned heavily, again and again and again, frantic and hungry, and felt his hips rise of their own volition off the bed to plunge more deeply into his mouth.

And then the tidal wave surged over him.  “Harold,” John cried, and he came and came and came, filling Harold’s mouth with swallow after hot liquid swallow. He could feel Harold testing it out, experimenting, deciding he liked the taste, licking the last drops from John trembling cock. He stayed there for a long time, moderating the force of his strokes to avoid causing pain to the now-achingly sensitive tip, softening the pressure as John softened in his mouth, until John’s entire body was limp and sweaty and his cock was spent and tender as Harold covered it with infinitely gentle kisses.

“Harold,” John moaned again, a low grateful sigh this time, and Harold smiled, pleased with his work. He climbed back up to the head of the bed where he could kiss John, parting his lips enough to let John taste himself inside Harold’s mouth, a peculiar but tremendously erotic sensation. They kissed, wetly, softly, hungrily, for a long time before John’s hand slipped down and took Harold’s iron-hard cock in his fist, stroking it up and down. Harold’s whole body contracted.

“My turn,” said John, in a low rasping growl, and Harold nodded. John began to move lower, to perform the same maneuver as Harold, but Harold’s hand on his head stopped him.

“No,” he said unexpectedly. “John. Will you kiss me?” John looked up at him, a question on his face. “Will you,” began Harold, then stopped. “Your hand,” he said finally. “Please. With your hands. While you – while you .kiss me.”

John thought he might faint from this, from the sheer hedonistic pleasure of being told what to do, of knowing that Harold knew exactly what he wanted, Harold had _thought about this_. So John kissed his way back up Harold’s chest, settled his heavy warm body in a comfortable position, curled up against Harold’s side and partway draped over him. He took Harold’s cock in his hand, trying to seem confident, trying to show that he knew what he was doing, trying not to let the wide-eyed wonder of it all show through his face. Then he settled against Harold and began to kiss him in earnest.

The silent room was soon full of hot, breathy gasps as Harold panted and trembled inside John’s firm grip, his hips rising and falling against the sweet weight of John’s body pressing him down, his parted mouth moving against John’s own with a wild fervor. John had never held another man’s cock before, and at first he too was simply exploring, testing, collecting data. Harold liked it when he glided a thumb slickly over the tip, which was already beginning to glisten with delicious wetness. He liked it when John’s fingers found the twin bulges below the base of his cock and began to caress them. He liked to be gripped firmly. He liked light scratches from John’s fingernail up and down the shaft. He liked parting his mouth wide to John’s own, feeling their tongues brush and swirl together. As his low little sighs deepened into hungry groans that emanated from deep inside his belly, as he began to mouth John’s name against the other man’s kisses, his hips began to buck and shiver, reminding Harold there was no point in resisting.

So he didn’t.

The hot wet astonishment of Harold coming in John’s hands was a delight. He trembled beneath John’s body, the orgasm cascading through him in ripples, like a rock thrown in a pond, and John held him and kissed him and let him come everywhere, sliding wet hands up and down to draw out the very last of it. When the flushed, disheveled Harold finally returned to earth, sticky and spent and deliriously happy, he pressed grateful kiss after kiss to John’s mouth.

“I think we acquitted ourselves remarkably well for our first time,” said Harold thoughtfully, “all things considered.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said John, sinking down onto the pillow and wrapping his arms around Harold.

“We’ll begin the next phase in the morning, shall we?” said Harold quietly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and sank blissfully into John’s arms. Within moments, he was asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "John pressed his eyes closed, feeling tears spill darkly down his cheeks. 'In all my life,' he said heavily, 'no one has ever looked at me - at the things I've done - and seen a good man.'  
> 'Then no one has ever looked at you,' said Harold, 'and seen what I see.'"

John had never been a person who slept well.

He’d learned, the way everyone learns in the military, the survival skill of being able to fall asleep instantly and wake up instantly – vital when you’re in a combat zone with chaos everywhere, and you need to catch your rest whenever you can. So he learned how to get his sleep in fits and starts, how to doze off sitting upright in a hard wooden chair for exactly forty minutes and then wake up clear-headed enough to aim his scope with perfect accuracy.

But those skills don’t translate into civilian life.

He’d struggled to adjust to this, all those long nights alone in empty bedrooms in dark apartments, the routine varying only now and then if a job kept them out all night (which happened occasionally) or if there was a woman (which happened seldom). Sex didn’t help, actually; or rather, it helped for a little while, and then made everything worse. After Jessica, it had become increasingly difficult for John to sleep properly with someone else in the bed. He generally preferred to go home with the woman, because of course it’s easier to leave quietly than to kick someone else out, but he always hated himself for it a little – sneaking around a stranger's pitch-black bedroom to silently gather his things and then closing a door noiselessly behind him to flee into the welcome, waiting arms of a New York City night.

So that didn’t make anything better, really, in the long run.

But the more he got to know Harold, the closer their friendship became, the more he relied on their long evenings together to push back the darkness a little more, bit by bit. Harold, also, had nobody to go home to. Harold was hiding from darkness of his own. Both of them took solace in subtly finding more and more ways to spend time together, even when there were no numbers. Harold might have an extra ticket to the opera, or John might want to introduce him to the hole-in-the-wall Korean barbecue he’d stumbled upon the other day. Or they’d decide Bear needed a long night walk, and stroll the quiet tree-lined streets of Chelsea or the East Village, talking comfortably and quietly about anything that wasn’t work.

But then, of course, eventually it would be over, and they would say goodnight and return to their solitary apartments, and try to sleep, so in the morning they could begin again.

And so the idea of _this_ – of a lush, bone-deep orgasm, a sweet descent into heavy blissful sleep with a pair of arms wrapped tightly around him, nine full hours of peaceful slumber without one dark or violent dream - and then to wake rested and refreshed, basking in the early morning sunlight, with Harold snoring happily into his chest – was so unlike John Reese that he hardly recognized himself.

Was it wrong, he wondered, when they were still at war with Samaritan, for him to be this content? Was it wrong that for one more day – just one more, before Shaw and Root came back home – he wanted to live inside the warmth and sweetness of this little bubble of joy and sunlight, to look down at the mussed brown-and-gray tufts of hair tickling his chin and make up for all the years he’d lost not telling Harold Finch that he loved him?

Harold shifted a little in his arms, and gave a little humming sigh as he eased out of slumber.  “So I didn’t dream it, then,” he observed dryly, raising his chin from where it had nestled into John’s chest and looking at him with a small, sleepy smile.  John smiled back.

“If I’d been dreaming this,” he retorted, reaching a hand down to the place where his stomach pressed against Harold’s, still sticky from last night, “I’d have left out the wet sheets.”

“We’ll have to take over the laundry ourselves,” agreed Harold. “Ms. Shaw’s sharp tongue would be rather merciless at our expense, I fear, if she knew.”

“She does know,” said John, startling Harold, and filled him in on the previous day’s conversation. Harold was equal parts mortified and amused by their heavy-handed intervention; “though I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “it does provide a bit of useful context as to the reason Root always encouraged me to stay here while she returned to the city alone with Shaw.”

John raised an eyebrow. Harold laughed. “All right,” he conceded. “ _One_ of the reasons.”

“I say we just roll with it,” John suggested. “Let them have their giggles and get it out of their system and then free up that third bedroom.”

“For what?” asked Harold. “Receiving guests?”

“Listen,” said John firmly, “now that we’re speaking again, I think it’s high time somebody told you that that desk of yours downstairs is a damned eyesore.”

“Now, I hardly think –“

“It takes up the _entire_ wall,” said John, refusing to be silenced, “and you never clean it, there’s cords and papers and files _everywhere_ – “

“I _do_ beg your pardon, I must have missed your transition into an aesthetic prima donna with impeccable taste in design, and by the way, _how_ many days in a row have you been wearing that same shirt?”

“So you _were_ looking,” said John, a note of triumph in his voice, and Harold laughed.

“I’m _always_ looking,” he said, and even though his tone was light and playful it was plain he was telling the truth. Warmth began to swirl low and deep inside John’s belly as his cock stirred and roused from sleep.

They looked at each other for a long moment, considering. “While I would like nothing more than to lie in bed with you all day,” Harold said reluctantly, “I suppose I must tear myself away to go back to work.”

“Why?” asked John.

“You and I may be vulnerable to our human desires, John, but the Machine is not.”

“One day,” John said firmly. “Root will be back tomorrow with the hard drive. You haven’t slept or eaten properly in months. You’ve been working around the clock.”

“John –“

“You are taking one day of vacation,” John insisted. “We both are. No computer for you – “

“And no guns for you.”

“Fair.”

“A vacation?” mused Harold thoughtfully. “My goodness. One entire day with no work. What on earth will we do to fill all this time?”

“I don’t know about you,” said John, “but I could use a shower.”

* * * * *

Minutes later, as John lowered himself to his knees on the white tile floor in front of Harold, the stingingly hot shower pounding down on his back, he prepared himself with an ache of aroused excitement to take a man’s cock inside his mouth for the very first time in his life.

The shower had seared them both clean, so Harold’s cock tasted fresh at first, like clean water, before it began to warm and pulse inside John’s mouth and the salt-warm taste of Harold’s flesh began to show through. At first he didn’t know how he would be able to take it all, so he started small, taking the tip inside his mouth just far enough to bump his teeth, and then wetly, hungrily suckling at it. Harold reached out an unsteady hand through the steam to grab onto something, anything to hold him upright as the sensations overtook his body, but there was nothing to hold. So John held out his hands, and Harold took them. John pressed forward with strong arms, providing resistance; he was as immutable as stone, as though Harold were bracing his hands against a brick wall.

“Better?” asked John, releasing Harold’s cock for a moment to look up at him, and Harold nodded.

“Much,” he said, “thank you. I’m afraid you’ve made me rather weak in the knees, Mr. Reese.”

The groan these words elicited as John returned to Harold’s cock, this time opening a little wider to feel the smooth bulk of it slide past his teeth and along his tongue and fill up his mouth with its hot heavy weight, provided a new piece of helpful information to Finch, which he filed neatly away in the mental catalog he had begun last night of things that appeared to please John.

John liked being called “Mr. Reese.”

So Harold didn’t stop.

“Oh,” he exhaled sharply as John’s mouth tightened around his cock. “Mr. Reese, that feels extraordinary.” The pressure increased, and John’s tongue began to move. “Yes,” breathed Harold. “Yes, Mr. Reese, right there. Oh. _Oh_.” And he rocked his hips forward, squeezing John’s hands in his own and pressing harder and harder against John’s iron-strong arms. John devoured Harold hungrily, astonished at how much pleasure it gave to him, at how hard it made him, to feel the weight of Harold’s cock resting against his tongue and hear the man’s soft, eager little cries.

When Harold came, he filled up all the space around the cock inside John’s mouth with a pungent, salt-bitter warmth that tasted somehow exactly the way he had expected and nothing like it at all at the same time. He came too hard, too forcefully, for John to take it all, to swallow fast enough to contain it, and the sight of his upturned face, hot steaming water flattening his dark hair against his perfect skull as his cheeks filled and hollowed over and over while warm liquid trickled out of his overflowing lips to pool on the floor, drew Harold’s orgasm out even longer. Just when he thought he was finished coming, he would look down at John’s face and there would be more.

By the time he had been drained dry, Harold’s knees could barely support him. John had to wash him, standing close enough that Harold could clutch at him for balance as John lathered Harold’s body and hair and let the scalding heat rinse them both clean. He still had strength, however, to stroke John’s cock to fullness, kissing his wet soap-scented chest as John groaned heavily and burst into Harold’s waiting hand.

“I must confess,” murmured Harold, seating himself on the wide, low bench against the far wall of the shower, holding out his hand to John, “that the attraction of performing such intimate acts in the shower has hitherto been rather lost on me.” John straddled Harold carefully, lowering himself onto Harold’s lap, and kissed him.

“Kinda seeing the appeal of it now, are you?” he asked with a grin, and Harold leaned back against the wall as John’s lips nibbled their way down his neck and chest, then back up again. Harold, John had observed – and something about it caused a tiny little crack in his heart – _loved_ kissing. He kissed like a man who had given and received a pitifully small number of kisses in his life and was making up for lost time. He kissed John like he was surprised by it every time. So John knelt on the bench, straddling Harold’s hips, rocking back and forth in his lap as their spent, soft cocks slowly, slowly began to rouse themselves again, and as the hot water pounded against their backs and the steam swirled around them, he kissed Harold Finch without ceasing until neither of them could breathe.

The kissing went on for a long time. It was all warm wet sighs and soft lips and flushed pink skin and the lemon-rosemary scent of Harold’s expensive soap. Harold had wrapped his arms around John to draw him closer, but after awhile one hand slipped from John’s back down between them where both their cocks were coming back to life. “I believe we may be nearing the end of the recovery period,” he observed. “Should you be interested in a follow-up session.”

“We _are_ on vacation,” said John agreeably, rising to his feet to stand in front of the seated Harold, who ran his hands appreciatively up and down John’s muscular thighs as he leaned in to swallow John’s cock again.

Harold was a quick study, and his careful observations from the night before paid off in spades. John leaned forward, bracing his palms against the wall over Harold’s head, crying out in blissful pleasure as Harold’s deft, precise mouth slid wetly over the tip of his cock, kissing and licking all the spots he had determined last night that John liked best. And it worked. John came almost immediately, he could hardly contain himself; he poured forth inside Harold’s thirsty mouth and whimpered in grateful pleasure as he felt the long slow lapping of Harold’s tongue drinking up every last drop.

Or rather, nearly the last, as Harold released him and smiled up at John and gave his cock a tender stroke, causing one final unexpected burst of liquid to fill Harold’s fingers. Harold looked down at it with a curious expression. “Perhaps the appeal of performing such an act in the shower,” he said thoughtfully, “is to provide those of us who, on the whole, prefer tidiness, a safe outlet for – shall we say – experimentation.”

Then he ran his sticky, dripping fingers up John’s chest. John closed his eyes as Harold smeared the warm, thick liquid all along his skin, coating him with it. Christ, it felt good. It felt raw and dirty and messy and entirely unexpected. Overcome with desire and gratitude, he sank to his knees in front of the seated Harold. “All right,” he murmured, taking Harold’s cock in his hands and kissing it fervently. “Like you said. We’re in the shower. Let’s take advantage.” Then his mouth got to work, busy and hungry. He sucked and licked and stroked, savoring the banquet of sensations, the weight and the heat and the taste and the thickness of the cock in his mouth. Harold too was ready quickly, but as he began to slid towards orgasm John rocked back onto his heels, kneeling below Harold, and closed his eyes.

“Mr. Reese,” said Harold uncertainly, and John smiled.

“Experimentation, you said,” he reminded Harold. “We’re in a shower. Can’t hurt anything.”

“John – “

“Harold, I know you want to.”

And God help him, he _did_ want to. And so, with a low groan that was almost a roar, as John began to pump his cock harder and faster, Harold came. He came on John’s face and his neck and shoulders and even in his hair. He came, and came, and came, heavy moans shaking the whispering silence as he gazed at the contrast of creamy white liquid against John’s dark skin and hair. John didn’t rinse it off, but rose to his feet and pulled Harold close, planting a wet messy kiss on his mouth and letting Harold’s hands roam all over, smearing both their bodies and hair with the warm wetness and leaving them both sticky and sated.

“My goodness, Mr. Reese,” Harold murmured, kissing John’s chest. “I had no idea I would ever find myself so aroused by something so . . . untidy.”

“You learn something new every day,” said John.

By the time they finally emerged from the shower – clean again, for the second time, and drowsy from the steaming heat and the force of two orgasms each – they were too spent to do anything more than climb back into the soft warm bed. “Don’t get me wrong,” John murmured into Harold’s ear as they both sank into the pillows, softening into a lazy, languid mid-morning sleep. “I’ve enjoyed every bit of it so far. But you said something last night about a main course – “

“That will serve, I believe, as this afternoon’s project,” he said smoothly, his low pleased voice sending shivers down John’s spine. “Don’t worry, John. I haven’t forgotten.” And with that, he closed his eyes.

* * * * *

John woke about an hour later, around 9:30, and left Harold sleeping in the bed with a soft kiss on his forehead. Harold stirred, but didn’t wake. John pulled on his boxers and favorite faded old t-shirt (Root and Shaw had made a trip to his apartment while he was in the hospital, and the small handful of physical possessions John Reese actually cared about were all at the safe house when he got here) and tiptoed down to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee and make breakfast.

They were in the suburbs now, they couldn’t order Chinese at 2 a.m., so they were forced by necessity to keep a well-stocked kitchen; or rather, Root did, since she never lost an argument with Shaw if she could distract her first with a burrito, and the others benefited. Root and John did most of the cooking, Shaw and Bear most of the eating, while Harold kept odd uneven meal hours, often forgetting to feed himself unless Root set a plate down in front of him at the computer and insisted he eat. Cooking for one was depressing, so John had never done it that much; but he was perfectly competent at all the basics, and even though he had become a grab-a-bagel-and-black-coffee-on-the-way-in-to-work kind of person, lazy weekend breakfasts were something he’d always liked.

Well, technically it was Monday. But they _were_ on vacation.

Immersed in the process of carefully flipping buttermilk pancakes on the sizzling griddle, he didn’t hear Harold come down the stairs. In fact, he didn’t notice Harold until the man entered the kitchen; John turned away from the stove, platter of steaming pancakes in hand, and saw Harold staring at him with an expression of wonder on his face.

“What?”

“You were _whistling,”_ said Harold, as though he had witnessed a most extraordinary miracle.

“Oh,” said John. “Was I?”

 _“Whistling,”_ Harold repeated incredulously.

John shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I do that sometimes,” he said, setting a plate in front of Harold and pulling the maple syrup from the pantry.

“I have known you four years, Mr. Reese, I have never once heard you whistle.”

John thought for a moment. “Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “I guess that’s probably true.” He poured them each a mug of coffee and dished up a plate of pancakes for himself. “Old habit,” he confessed. “Used to get me in trouble all the time when I was a kid. Sorta just comes out without me noticing, when I’m – “

He stopped short, the maple syrup in his hand. Harold was staring at him.

“Happy,” Harold finished for him, and John nodded helplessly, feeling his insides collapse at the weight of the thing he hadn’t said:

That this was the first time in longer than he could remember when he'd actually been happy.

Harold tried to say something, couldn’t, looked away instead. “Eat your pancakes before they’re cold,” said John finally, and Harold took a bite.

“Wonderful,” he said sincerely, and the affection that radiated from his face as he smiled at John made the other man glow beneath the warmth of its light.

 _Happy,_ he thought.  _Who knew._

* * * * *

It had begun as a bit of a joke, the idea of them taking a vacation, but neither of them realized how badly they’d needed it. Harold couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep, so deeply had he immersed himself in work – or, over the past few days, in _pretending_ to work, which was frankly just as taxing. He was worn to the point of exhaustion; after a month of twelve- to twenty-hour days – guiltily making up all the time he had lost worrying about John instead of tending to the Machine – he was near the breaking point. But John had been right; they could give themselves one day. And already Harold was astonished at how very different he felt today – basking in the warm sunshine of the kitchen with coffee and pancakes after two orgasms and a morning nap, John smiling at the table across from him – than he had at this time yesterday, when he had been sequestered in his bedroom trying to work but failing because he could think of nothing but John. The way he had moved faster than lightning to pull Harold to the ground behind the couch when he thought they were in danger, the way his heavy strong body felt as it pressed Harold protectively into the ground, shielding him from harm. The startling shock of his mouth, the way Harold had been unable to resist parting his lips and kissing him back for a heartbeat before he remembered who and what and where he was and pulled abruptly away to flee back upstairs. And then he’d spent all that night, and all yesterday, distracted and miserable until John finally said what he said and turned everything inside out.

 _What a difference a day makes,_ both men found themselves thinking as the sun poured down through the yellow curtains and they finished off the last of the pancakes. As promised, John didn’t go near the weapons storage in the living room and Harold did not go near his computer. Instead, they took their coffee into the living room and curled up on the couch together. They read through the paper first – Harold had been unwilling to live anywhere, even a safe house, where he could not get the _New York Times._ They were both keenly aware of how obvious it was that Harold dived straight for the crossword puzzle while John picked up the Sports section – “we’ve very nearly reached the line of parodying ourselves,” Harold remarked dryly – but it didn’t stop him preening a little at John’s admiration when he finished the crossword in six minutes.

“It’s Monday,” he demurred. “They increase in difficulty over the course of the week.”

“Still.”

“I had no idea you found competence at word puzzles to be so erotic,” said Harold.

“Honest to God,” John confessed, “neither did I.”

Twenty minutes later, when they returned downstairs after another _highly_ enjoyable shower, Harold returned to the paper while John – who really did only care about the Sports section – pulled out the book he’d tried unsuccessfully to read the day before. Harold had been trying to get him to read _The Iliad_ for years and had finally given him a copy for Christmas. It was predictably, perfectly Harold – old enough that the leather cover and worn pages smelled pleasantly musty, reminding John with a sharp pang of all the nights they spent working late in the library, but neither so old nor so valuable that it was a book for keeping on a high shelf. Harold had wanted him to read it. So he curled up on the couch, leaning comfortably against Harold’s shoulder, and for a long time there was nothing except the soft swish and flip of pages turning, the smell of good coffee, the warmth of Harold’s skin through his t-shirt, and the words on the page.

John hadn’t expected to like the book, but was pulled in immediately. It was a good translation, Harold had said – he was naturally the kind of person with strong opinions about Greek translation – and John, who struggled with Shakespeare when Harold dragged him to the theatre and knew only that this book was several thousand years older, was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it drew him in. Of course, it was infinitely more enjoyable when he could pause from time to time and share passages aloud to Harold.

 _“’Why so much grief for me?’”_ he read, and Harold smiled in instant recognition of the lines. _“’No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you.’”_

 _“’It is born with us the day that we are born,”_ ’ Harold finished for him.

John smiled. “I like this Hector guy.”

“I rather thought you would.”

“Pretty sure I’m not gonna like where he ends up, though,” John observed dryly, sipping his coffee. “I seem to remember from middle school there was something about a big wooden horse that got his people into some trouble.”

“Oh, he dies horribly,” agreed Harold, smiling, “but it’s the getting there that matters.”

“Something you’re trying to tell me, Harold?” John quipped lightly, and he’d meant it as a joke, they both had, but suddenly the weight of the words hit them both at the same time and they froze.

Harold set the paper down. “John,” he began. “I didn’t mean that.”

“You bought me this for Christmas,” said John slowly, remembering the conversation. He thought about the eager way Harold had looked at him when he opened the gift, hoping it was something John would like, the way he had stammered a little when he explained it was one of his favorite books. He recalled how touched and moved he had felt – how difficult it was to get through that moment without revealing too much of his own feelings – at the thought of Harold wrapping this gift with his own hands. For him. It was the first time, after four years, that they had exchanged Christmas gifts, and John remembered feeling self-conscious about the long flat box containing a cashmere scarf from Harold’s favorite store, which suddenly felt too impersonal next to such an intimate gift. The scarf was beautiful, a soft clear gray with just a hint of green that reminded him of Harold’s eyes – but John could hardly tell him that. Still, Harold had worn the scarf every day that winter.

How blind they’d been.

“You said you wanted me to read this book,” John went on. “That it reminded you of me. _Hector_ reminded you of me.”

“John, please don’t –“

“Why did you give me this book, Harold?”

“Because I had no other way to say it,” Harold answered haltingly, suddenly miserable. “I love that book dearly – I have always loved it – and while I knew I could never tell you the way that I felt about you, I thought perhaps . . . to give you something that I cherished, to know that in your home there was something of me – perhaps it was foolish, but it permitted me to feel, in some way, close to you. Connected to you.”

“Oh, Harold,” John murmured, kissing him softly and closing his eyes, feeling the sting of tears, as he rested his forehead for a moment against John’s own.

“John, I would never – “

 

“How does Hector die, Harold?” John asked quietly, and Harold pulled back.

“John – “

“Harold, just _tell_ me.”

Harold swallowed hard. “He was the hero of Troy,” he began. “He was their greatest warrior, no one in the whole city could compare. And more than that – he was a _good man_.” John suddenly could no longer look at him. “He was noble, like you,” said Harold. “Heroic and brave, like you. Powerful. And yet also _kind._ The other warriors of Troy, they wanted war with Greece, but Hector did not. Hector did everything he could to stop it. But the war was bigger than he was. And so at the very last, he stood his ground outside the walls of Troy, giving his men the chance to escape while he faced down Achilles in battle himself. He died to give his men a chance at victory.”

“But Troy fell anyway,” said John, and it was like a cloud passing over the sun, the way his dark tone dimmed the sweet golden haze of their perfect morning, bringing with it a sense of heavy foreboding, of walls closing in.

“Yes,” said Harold helplessly. “Troy fell anyway. Troy was always going to fall. But Hector – “

“But Hector was a good soldier,” said John roughly. “He stepped in front of the bullet.”

“John –“

“You’re afraid we’re going to lose to Samaritan,” John interrupted him abruptly, and Harold recoiled, startled.

“What?”

“A war too big for us to win,” said John numbly. “A man facing down death for the last time to save everyone he loves, because he doesn’t know his city’s going to burn anyway.”

 _“No,”_ said Harold in a firm voice, and he set down his coffee to take John’s hand. “A man at war with an army that will use any manipulative, cruel, and vicious means to achieve their own ends. Of course Hector died, John, we _all_ die. The only variable is _how._ The Greek army had no honor, and their leaders were petty and corrupt. They won by deceit. But Hector refused to be brought low by them. He maintained his honor.  He stood alone outside the walls of Troy,” said Harold, something urgent and heartfelt in his voice as he pressed John’s hands in his, “and faced his fear, because he never lost sight of the things that mattered. That were worth fighting for.” John felt the sting of tears behind his eyelids. “This is why you are not replaceable to me,” said Harold softly, leaning his forehead against John’s and cupping his face in warm, soft hands. “There are a thousand men in this city who could fire a rifle accurately if that was all I required. If it were only your ability to fight that mattered to me. But what I need is _you_. John Reese. Not the things that you can do, but who you are.”

“Who am I, Finch?” John breathed softly, as Harold cradled his face in impossibly tender hands.

“You are the last good man in Troy,” he told him, “and you will not let your city burn.”

John pressed his eyes closed, feeling tears spill darkly down his cheeks.  "In all my life," he said heavily, "no one has ever looked at me - at the things I've done - and seen a good man."

"Then no one has ever looked at you," said Harold, "and seen what I see."  And then he kissed him.

 _No,_ thought John, feeling his heart swell within him so painfully that he thought it might burst.  _No one ever has._

“Besides,” said Harold thoughtfully, after he finally pulled away. “When I was a boy, I was rather in love with Hector.” The tears in John’s eyes overflowed as he burst out laughing.

“I wish you’d led with that,” he said, and Harold kissed him again.

“You are not Hector,” he said. “You will not be broken by this. I have faith in you.”


	4. Chapter 4

They read in the warm afternoon sun for hours. Finch made the book new again, the way he made everything new again, and it stopped being a story about a city that burned thousands of years ago and became instead a story about the way Harold had loved John before he had known how to say it. _This is the kind of man he thinks I am,_ thought John with a rush of overwhelming emotion as Hector stood his ground outside his city for the last time, and he wanted to be the man Harold thought he was more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

Harold had long since put the paper aside, content to run his fingers through John’s hair and watch him read. As John closed the book and set it aside, faintly amused at himself for being moved to tears by it, he sank back against Harold’s shoulder and closed his eyes, savoring the feel of Harold’s gentle caresses. They sat like that for a long time, before Harold murmured John’s name quietly, a thrill of something warm and hungry in his voice.

“John,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

And John’s heart stopped beating, and he knew.

“Harold,” he said, swallowing hard, his voice a rasp, pulling away enough to look him in the eyes. “Do you mean – you want to – “

“I confess I have found it difficult all day long,” said Harold, “to think of anything else.” And there was a promise in it, when he kissed John this time, that shot an arrow of heat straight through John’s body and made it suddenly very difficult to remember how words worked, or to breathe. “Come with me,” said Harold, and took John by the hand, leading him up to the bedroom.

“Take your clothes off,” said Harold in a voice that was both gentle and thrillingly authoritative, and John found himself completely astonished by how arousing he found it to _submit._ “Lie down on your stomach,” said Harold, and he arranged John on the bed with a pile of pillows below his head for comfort and another beneath his hips, lifting John’s ass off the mattress and leaving him feeling suddenly vulnerable, exposed, and almost shy. “Are you comfortable?” Harold asked him, and John could only nod. “Good,” he said. “It seems prudent that before we engage in – in the act itself – to undertake significant amount of preparation. Since it is, after all, the first time for either of us.”

“Preparation,” John repeated, his mouth suddenly dry.

“To . . . to make you ready,” said Harold, and he was a little shy about it but astonishingly calm. “For me to be – inside you.”

“Harold,” John groaned, and Harold ran an affectionate hand down John’s back, then leaned in close to kiss his throat.

“Mr. Reese,” he said, “would you like me inside you?”

John’s only answer was a heavy groan muffled by the thick mound of pillows beneath his face.

“Oh, I’m very glad to hear it,” said Harold, and John could hear in his voice that he was smiling. “Lie still,” he said, “I’ll be right back.” John closed his eyes, buried his face in the pillow, and tried to remember how breathing worked in case he forgot again. In, two three. Out, two, three. He felt his chest rise and fall against the mattress. Harold was going to fuck him. Harold was going to give the one thing that John Reese had wanted from him so desperately, so ferociously, for such a long time, that he could not even admit it to himself or he would never again have been able to maintain his composure in Harold’s presence. In his wildest dreams, he would never have believed he had permission to ask for this. The touch of Harold’s hand on his shoulder as they worked, yes. A handshake. Maybe, someday, an embrace. That was all. But _this –_

John felt faint.

“Are you ready?” asked Harold, reappearing behind him, and John felt the weight of Harold sitting down beside him on the bed. John nodded. He wasn’t, of course, not in the least – he felt giddy with nerves and excitement, like his entire body was fizzing and carbonated. He heard a soft wet liquid sound – Harold pouring lubricant into his palm and rubbing his hands together to warm it. “I’m going to begin with one finger,” he said, and began slowly tracing lazy circles around the entrance to John’s ass, not going inside yet, just knocking politely on the door. John breathed in and out. When the finger finally slid inside, gently, up to the knuckle, John’s first reaction was startled and defensive, clenching hard with a loud, sharp gasp. “Shhhh,” murmured Harold, stroking John’s back with his other hand. “John, it’s all right. Take deep breaths, in and out. Relax. Just relax, John.”

“Harold,” he groaned, adjusting to the unfamiliar sensation, but Harold was gentle and went slow and it didn’t take long for the tension to seep out of him and allow him to relax enough for Harold’s finger to slip inside even futher.

“Very good, Mr. Reese,” said Harold approvingly, and John felt his cock begin to swell at the sound of his voice. Then Harold’s finger began to slowly thrust in and out, in and out, loosening and relaxing John’s muscles as he remembered to breathe. For a long time, Harold just used that one finger. Then, once he felt John’s tension begin to ease, he added a second one. The change was startling again at first, but it didn’t take as long the second time for John to ease into it, find it pleasurable. Harold moved his fingers inside John in a scissoring motion, and John’s hips nearly rose off the pillow as he let out an explosive moan. “Good,” said Harold. “Very good.”

“Harold, I’m – I can’t – “

“Turn over, John,” said Harold suddenly, and, startled, John did, resettling his ass on top of the stack of pillows and planting both his feet on the mattress to open himself up where Harold sat. “I thought it might be easier,” Harold suggested, “to keep you relaxed as I work.” And as he slipped a third finger inside John’s ass alongside the others, he bent down and took John’s cock in his mouth.

This went on for hours. Harold let him come as many times as he liked; he worked John carefully, painstakingly open with his fingers, stretching and stroking and massaging until the pressure building up inside John’s cock became unbearable. Then he would bend down, take John’s cock in his mouth as he continued busily working his hands inside him, and suck deeply and forcefully until John burst into his throat, after which Harold would lick him carefully clean – Harold’s blowjobs were as fastidious as everything else about him – and then return to his previous task.

By the time the sun was beginning to set, John was nearly a wreck. He was sweating and trembling, his muscles so limp and unresisting he felt like a liquid thing. His breath came in ragged moans. He had come six times, and Harold had kept going, insistent that John be properly prepared.

“Harold, _please,”_ John begged weakly, over and over, and over and over Harold responded to him kindly but firmly with, “No. Mr. Reese, not yet.”

Until the moment finally arrived where John moaned “Harold, please,” and Harold said, “Oh, God, yes,” and then finally – _finally_ – Harold’s cock pushed gently inside him.

John gasped. It was nothing like Harold’s fingers, quick and light and deft. Harold’s cock was heavy and hot and it pressed him open, stretching him to bursting. He could only take an inch or so at a time, to begin with, as he got used to the sensations. Harold had been right about needing practice before the girls came home; John’s cries were desperate and uncontrollably loud, strange animal noises he’d never heard himself make before, roaring grunting panting sounds that echoed throughout the room. Harold was slow, and deliberate, and by the time he was halfway in John had reminded himself about the deep breathing, to keep from passing out at the extraordinary sensation of pain-pleasure Harold’s cock was giving him.

“My God,” exclaimed Harold softly, in a tone of astonishment. “You feel _extraordinary_.”

He knelt between John’s spread thighs, bracing himself on them for balance, and easing himself inside a little at a time. He was panting, disheveled, and his eyes were big and wild, and as John’s back arched off the mattress and his groans came rough and heavy, he felt a rush of pure ecstasy overtake him at the thought that this felt as good to Harold as it did to him.

Harold took off his glasses and leaned forward to set them on the nightstand, and the change in angle shocked them both. _“Oh,”_ said Harold as John cried out fiercely, and he stayed there for a moment, experimenting. “Is this better?” he asked John gently. “When I lie forward on you like this?” John nodded weakly, eyes pressed closed, hands balled into useless fists at his side. Harold slid inside deeper and deeper, opening John wide and filling him up completely, and then – leaning forward to take one of John’s nipples into his mouth – he lifted his hips, pulled very nearly all the way out of John, and then –

“Oh God,” John groaned, the guttural sound almost a broken sob in his throat, because Harold was fucking him, and his whole body was on fire with sensation. He wasn’t rough or harsh, he glided in and out smoothly but firmly, and the sensation of hot wet friction sent John to heaven. “Please,” he moaned brokenly and he didn’t know what he was begging for but he couldn’t stop saying it, “please, please, yes, please, yes,” as though they were the only words he knew.

“Would you like it harder?” Harold asked, and a lightheaded John could only nod. “I find myself very much desiring more of you,” said Harold contemplatively, “but in this position, I’m afraid – with my leg, I am unable to – oh,” he cut himself off brightly, as though having an idea. “Yes. That will work perfectly.” And he pulled himself up to a seated position, his back against the upholstered headboard. John looked at him. Harold held out his arms and John climbed inside them, letting Harold hold him tight. John knelt over Harold’s lap, one knee braced on either side of Harold’s legs for support, and slowly, carefully lowered himself onto Harold’s cock.

The angle made all the difference. Harold’s cock as John sat on his lap shot straight up inside John’s body, father and deeper than he’d gone before. “Harold,” John groaned.

“Oh, John,” Harold murmured, kissing John’s chest until John took Harold’s face in his hands and kissed him as John began – gently at first, and then more and more fiercely – to ride Harold’s cock.

It was unbearable. It was like being tortured by pleasure. It broke John Reese open. Harold’s cock felt so good inside him, hard and insistent and warm, and the strength of his body worked in their favor. John rode Harold hard and rough and wild, rising and falling on his cock faster and faster and faster.

“Oh, John,” Harold murmured, burying his mouth in John’s throat, and reaching a probing hand down between their bodies to grasp John’s cock as the other scratched frantically at John’s muscled back.

“Harold,” he whimpered, sinking forward against the smaller man’s chest.

“Come for me, Mr. Reese,” said Harold encouragingly, sliding a hot wet hand up and down John’s cock, and the pleasure from both sides at the same time was too much for John, he couldn’t hold out any longer, and collapsed with a violent shudder against Harold’s chest. Harold held him close, murmuring encouragements and rubbing his back with strong, warm hands, kissing his mouth over and over, until he himself came with frantic abandon and burst deep inside John with an intoxicating rush like nothing John had ever felt before.

For a long time, they just sat there, clutching each other, hearts pounding, listening to each other's breathing.  John couldn't form conscious thoughts, at first, not for a long time after.  Everything was flashes of sensation.  The smooth friction as Harold's softening cock pulled slowly out of him.  The sheen of sweat on both their bodies.  The musky, animal smell of sex rising up from the sheets.  The way even after they had long since come down from orgasm, Harold held him close, not wanting to let go.  The odd sensation of their hearts pounding at the same frequency - heavy and rapid at first, then gradually tapering back off as their breathing did until they both felt steady again.

"How are you?" asked Harold unexpectedly, and his tone was so oddly formal - the way he sometimes got when he was very nervous - that John couldn't stop himself from laughing.

"Very well, thank you," he said back, equally formally.  "How are you?"

Harold flushed a little at the light mockery, but he was smiling.  "What I meant to inquire," he said, as John shifted off his lap to sink down onto the pillows and wrapped his arms around Harold's chest, "was whether that was - whether you - forgive me, I do not have a great deal of -"

"It was incredible," said John frankly, and Harold looked pleased.

"I'm so glad," he said, curling up into John's arms and reaching over him to retrieve his glasses from the nightstand.

"Really?" asked John skeptically.  "You need those?  You going to be doing another crossword puzzle in bed?"

"You expressed very few complaints about the last crossword puzzle."

"Well, that's fair."

"And besides," said Harold, smiling at him.  "I like to look at you."

John couldn't argue with that.  And he liked Harold with his glasses on, more than he liked to admit.  With his glasses, Harold looked like himself.  That was the face John had fallen in love with, after all.

As Harold reached for his glasses, John absently noticed the bottle of lubricant sitting on the nightstand beside it, and it stopped him short. 

He had, of course, in the moment - as he lay on his back with his face buried in pillows, moaning in pleasure while Harold stroked him - registered the fact that Harold had obtained some lube somewhere, but he'd been a bit too occupied to give it much thought.  But now it struck him as singularly out of place.  The house was a rental, and fastidious Harold Finch would never in a hundred years have touched with a ten-foot pole any such item left by previous occupants.  And his shocked panic when John had kissed him out of the blue that first night seemed to contradict the idea that he had laid in supplies for a long night of sexy action when he didn't even have the nerve to look him in the eye.

"Harold," said John with a sinking feeling.  "Where did you find that?"

"I am not entirely sure you really want to know, Mr. Reese," said Harold, just as John's eyes caught the curlicued pink font on the label and the cheerful notice that it was "SAFE FOR USE WITH ALL SILICON DEVICES!"

"Oh God," muttered John.  "Oh God, oh God, oh God."

"Now, John - "

"Silicon devices.  I'm never gonna be able to get that picture out of my head now."

"They're adults, Mr. Reese, and we are in no position to -"

"I know, I get it, I'm a hypocrite, it's just - Jesus, Shaw's like my _sister."_

"Don't worry," said Harold dryly, "it does not appear to belong to Ms. Shaw."

"You're not helping, Harold, you're just giving the mental image more detail."

"Well, I apologize," said Harold primly, "I gambled on the assumption that you wanted to have sex with me."

"I did want to have sex with you.  A _lot_."

"Then the contents of Ms. Groves' nightstand are a necessary evil," he said with a smile.  "I encourage you simply to think as little as possible about the particular nature of Ms. Groves' silicon device -"

 _"Jesus Christ_ -"

" . . . and the methodology by which she uses it on Ms. Shaw -"

"You're ruining the mood pretty fast here, Harold."

"Have no fear, Mr. Reese," said Harold cheerfully, "I shall be sure to replace it before they return home so neither of them will notice."

"Oh God, what if they notice?" groaned John.  "What if we have to _talk about it_?  Root's gonna have way too much fun with this."

"Here are the options," said Harold.  "If it disturbs you so greatly, I can go return this immediately and we will not use it again.  And wait to engage in intercourse until I can obtain more with the weekly grocery delivery."

"That's five days away."

"Yes."

"Or?"

"Or," said Harold, "you permit me another, shall we say, thirty minutes, to recuperate, we agree to cease discussing where this exceptionally helpful product came from, and I promise I shall put it to excellent use."

John felt his spent, exhausted cock begin to slowly wake back up again.  He sighed.

"I'd rather gnaw off my own arm than say this to her face," he grinned at Harold, leaning over to kiss him, "but thank you, Root."

 


	5. Chapter 5

They took a break after round two to make a quick trip to the kitchen for sustenance – it was dinner time, and they’d had nothing all day since the pancakes – then returned to Harold’s bed to continue what Harold delicately referred to as “the evening’s activities.”

The bad news was that by the time they crashed out completely, around two in the morning, there was absolutely no way to hide from Root that they’d raided her nightstand. The bottle had been completely full when Harold obtained it, and now it was decidedly . . . not.

The good news was that there was no way that they didn’t like it.

They liked it kneeling at the headboard, with John gripping the cool metal posts in his sweaty hands as Harold knelt behind him. They liked it lying on their sides, so Harold could drape his good leg over John to pull him close and had easy access to John’s cock, so they could come at the same time. They liked it in the shower (although realizing that their purloined bottle of lube was helpfully labeled “WATERPROOF!” once again filled John’s brain with uncomfortably vivid mental images, which he could not shake until Harold pressed him up against the white tile wall underneath the hot spray of water and entered him from behind so hard he couldn’t think anymore).

After hours of experimentation, they began to develop a sense of each other’s preferences. Harold figured out that John liked to be vulnerable – that somehow, for some reason, John felt safe enough in bed with him to let every wall down. John liked it best, and came hardest, when he was in a submissive position. He liked to lay on his stomach, face buried in pillows, body soft and relaxed, while Harold stretched out on top of him. John, meanwhile, had noticed that Harold always came harder when John was kissing him. He liked it best lying on his back with John above him, riding his cock and leaning forward chest to chest, their mouths soldered wetly together to catch each other’s frantic little gasps.

But there was no position that wasn’t good. There was nothing about it that wasn’t dizzying, addictive, overwhelming. John had always liked sex just fine, and thought of himself as reasonably good at it, but no one had ever made him come like this. No one had ever gotten far enough inside his walls to gently break him open, to make him sweat and tremble and moan and cry out and then cradle him in affectionate arms while he caught his breath and returned to earth.

And Harold, well. Harold didn’t let people in either. There had been Grace, of course, so kind and gentle and generous, endlessly forgiving of his uncertain fumblings and sweetly timid in her own way. It had always been lovely and pleasant with Grace. But it had not left Harold feeling any sense of real confidence or certainty in his abilities. If you had asked him, during his time with Grace, if he thought he was a _good lover_ , he would have stammered and looked away and been unable to answer. But _oh,_ the way John shook and gasped and moaned his name, staring wildly at him with dark, lust-fogged eyes . . . Nobody had ever looked at Harold Finch with eyes like that.

Their wonder in each other was unceasing, and it was only when they found themselves too exhausted to continue that they could possibly make themselves stop. They’d been doing it John’s favorite way, and as his hips finally rose off the bed to capture more of Harold, he came hard and hungry inside John’s ass, then collapsed weakly and heavily against John’s back. His whole body was spent and sweaty, but he found himself with just enough strength to climb back down onto the mattress, curl up close to face John, and kiss him over and over as he stroked John’s cock.

“Harold, I don’t think I can – _oh_ – I don’t think I can go another round after – _oh, God_ – after this one,” John panted, words tumbling out between short, rough little gasps as Harold’s hand worked him carefully.

“Nor I, Mr. Reese,” Harold admitted with a rueful smile. “I have never in all my life felt this wonderfully exhausted.” He kissed John’s mouth as he felt the cock in his hand leap and pulse like a living thing, and then as John arched his back and let out a wild cry, everything was warm and wet inside his hungry fingers, and they collapsed together, sticky and drained and utterly exhausted. John felt a heavy, blissful, lush sleep swallow him up almost immediately, and the very last thing he remembered was Harold curling up inside his arms, pillowing his head on John’s chest, and whispering in a low voice:

“I had no idea. I had no idea that it would feel like this.”

* * * * *

They went another few rounds in the shower the next morning before breakfast.  John made spinach and bacon omelettes, which they ate on the couch with their coffee and the newspaper, and then curled up on the couch to rest his head in Harold's lap while Harold did the Tuesday crossword (six minutes, again) and then picked up his book.  It was pure bliss for John to lay on the soft cushions with his head pillowed on Harold's thighs, as Harold ran affectionate fingers through John's hair.  They lay like that until they heard the sound of the car pulling into the driveway, startling them, and John abruptly pulled away, almost guiltily. But Harold smiled and shook his head. “We discussed this,” he reminded John. “Ms. Shaw and Ms. Groves are already very much aware of the situation, and obfuscation or deceit would be fruitless. We lost four years of our lives denying the truth of this to each other. I have no interest in wasting further time by denying it to anyone else.” He reached out to John and pulled him back down into his lap, resting his head on Harold’s thighs as Harold picked up his book with one hand and ran absentminded fingers through John’s hair with the others.   “Besides,” he said, a teasing lilt in his voice, “their bedroom shares a wall with mine, so I hardly think this is a secret that will keep longer than one night no matter how hard we try.”

John blushed a little at the implications of this, but was spared the need for a response by the sound of keys in the front door and Bear bounding across the floor to leap up onto the couch beside Harold, nosing curiously at his hand in John’s hair – even Bear seemed to recognize that this was unusual – as Root and Shaw entered the living room.   Harold made no move to get up, or even to pause stroking John’s hair, and his calm insistence in refusing to be embarrassed by this made John feel a little more steady. So he stayed put too. And besides, Harold’s fingers in his hair felt too good for him to want it to stop.

“Well, isn’t this adorable,” Root exclaimed gaily. “Sameen, look at Harold snuggling up with his precious puppy who missed him so much!”

“And Bear’s home too,” said Shaw, through a mouthful of the maple bar she had forced Root to make an emergency Dunkin Donuts pit stop to obtain on the way home.

“Very amusing, Ms. Shaw,” observed Harold without looking up from his book.

Shaw turned to Root. “We’re gonna have to look at them being cute like this _every day_ ,” she said with a horrified shudder. “We didn’t think this shit through.”

“I think it’s sweet,” insisted Root. “I’m glad Harry’s happy. And for God’s sake, it took them long enough.”

“True that,” agreed Shaw, chomping off another bite of donut.

“You know we can hear you, right?” said John. Shaw finished her donut, ignored the napkin Root handed her and wiped her powdered-sugar hands on her jeans.

“Did you get the hard drive?” Harold asked her, and she reached into her satchel to pull it out, grinning widely.

“Piece of cake,” said Root. “We didn’t even have to shoot anybody.”

“I think you mean we didn’t even _get_ to shoot anybody,” Shaw corrected, and Root rolled her eyes. They appeared to be in some disagreement over whether or not this made the mission a success.

“As much as I hate to break up this adorable domestic picture,” said Root, “we have twenty-four hours to go through this entire hard drive, pull what we need, and get it back into Carter Grace’s apartment before he notices it’s missing. Harry, we’re gonna need to settle in for a long night.”

“Very good, Ms. Groves,” said Harold, rising from the couch to follow her over to the computer. He looked back over at John. “Shall I pull up a chair for you with your back to the desk?” he asked. “I know how the clutter deeply offends your _refined aesthetic sensibilities_ –“

“Never gonna let that go, are you, Harold?”

“Certainly not for the foreseeable future, no.”

“Let’s see,” said Shaw, pulling off her jacket and tossing it down onto the couch as she flopped down to cuddle with Bear. “Am I more relieved that we’re done with the terrible creepy-ass uncomfortable silence with you two avoiding each other, or more grossed out that you both turned out to be so goddamn sappy? You know, now that you two idiots are – “

“No longer in denial about wanting to rip each other’s clothes off with their teeth?” Root suggested lightly.

“I was gonna say ‘speaking to each other,’” said Shaw, “but yeah. Her thing too.”

“Gee, Root,” said John, “it’s almost hard to believe I used to not like you,” earning him a raised eyebrow of amused disapproval from Harold, and an angelic smile from Root.

“Oh, John, don’t be like that,” she chided. “Not after I went to all that trouble to leave you both such a thoughtful gift.”

“What gift?” he asked suspiciously.

“The one in my nightstand,” she said innocently. “You did find it, didn’t you? I assumed you must have. Since you seem so . . .” She looked him up and down appraisingly. _“Relaxed.”_

John flushed with mortification, and even Harold seemed at a loss.

They didn’t just leave them alone for three days to talk out their complicated emotions, then. They left them alone for three days to do – well – exactly what they had done.

_Oh God._

Root’s knowing smile made John blush from head to toe, and he scowled at her to conceal his discomfort.

“The fact that nobody’s murdered you yet doesn’t mean it’s permanently off the table, Root,” said John. “Just something to consider.”

Shaw cackled at this through another mouthful of the donut which she was now breaking into chunks and feeding to Bear. Root smiled sweetly and patted John’s cheeks.

“You can keep it,” she said. “We don’t need it back. We also bought earplugs, so you should feel free to – “

“That’s enough, Ms. Groves,” said Harold reprovingly.

“Have we decided what we’re going to do with the extra room yet?” she asked Shaw, ignoring him. “Maybe we could make it Bear’s room.”

“Bear likes to sleep next to me,” protested Shaw.

“Maybe we could make it Bear’s room,” Root said again.

“I was thinking like a really cool weapons locker,” said Shaw. “Like get cool shelves and move everything out of the garage and – “

“Call me old-fashioned, Sameen, but it’s hard for me to get in a romantic mood next door to a room full of grenade launchers,” said Root dryly.

“You didn’t seem to have a problem _in_ a room full of grenade launchers – “

“What makes you two think you get to decide what to do with my room?” said John. “It’s my room.”

“Is it? Still?”

“Well . . . my stuff’s all there.”

“Then move your stuff, I want a weapons locker.”

“It’s my room! I get to decide what we do with it.”

“Fine, then,” snapped Shaw, “what were you planning to do with it?”

“ . . . weapons locker,” he finally mumbled, irritably, as Shaw crowed in delight.

“I’m beginning to like schmoopy lovestruck John,” she said, dodging swiftly as he reached out to tackle her. “He’s way more fun than the sad sack.”

“Doesn’t dress as well, though,” Root observed, taking in John’s t-shirt and sweats with elegant condescension.

“Doesn’t have to,” said Shaw. “He landed a man already. He can stop waxing his legs and schlump around in sweats and eat whatever the hell he wants.”

“Well, you would know,” Root retorted crisply, and the scowl on Shaw’s face made John burst out laughing. Shaw turned to him, pure astonishment etched all over her striking face, and even Root looked startled.

“Look,” said Shaw bluntly. “This conversation never happened, if you bring it up I’ll deny it, and if you bring it up a second time I’ll rip your arm out of its fuckin’ socket. But I have to admit,” she went on, “that it’s kind of . . . not the worst thing in the world to see you assholes this happy.”

John looked at Shaw.

Shaw looked at John.

“Shaw,” he began, then stopped.

“Shut up,” she said.

But she was smiling.

* * *

Shaw’s ecstatic glee for a weapons locker of her very own (“They may be, as you say, ‘badass as hell,’ Ms. Shaw, but for the last time, I am not investing in state-of-the-art climate-controlled glass storage cases”) made her more than usually willing to be helpful, so by the time Harold and Root finished with the stolen hard drive and came upstairs to bed, John’s room was empty of everything but furniture, with all his belongings moved into the master bedroom with Harold’s. It went reasonably smoothly, considering the circumstances, and John counted himself lucky that he only had to endure one more comment about Root’s new earplugs before everyone turned in for the night.

“They certainly find themselves amusing,” Harold observed dryly as he closed the bedroom door behind him, which John thought was the understatement of the century, and said so. Harold laughed. “Still,” he added, “I suppose the mockery is infinitely preferable to disapproval. They may enjoy making us both uncomfortable – you in particular, I would imagine – but they seem, rather endearingly, _pleased_.”

“Though not pleased enough to stay gone another night and leave us with the house to ourselves,” John observed, as he sat on the bed watching Harold undress and tried not to burst with the sheer unexpected pleasure of how intimate, how _married,_ it made him feel. Just sitting here in their shared bedroom, putting their clothes in the laundry basket and talking about their day.

“It does put one rather in mind of the challenges faced by parents,” said Harold dryly. “I would imagine it to be no small feat to obtain privacy for intimate relations in a household, such as ours, with two difficult children. And a dog.”

Which gave John an idea.

By the time Shaw stormed into their bedroom, forty-five minutes later, enraged past the point of all reason by the nonstop slamming of the headboard against their shared wall and the men’s loud, theatrical, orgasmic groaning, she was ready to start kicking in kneecaps.

“For Christ’s sake,” she barked, “some of us are trying to – “

And then she stopped short.

It took her a minute to process the image in front of her, as a fully-clothed John sat casually in the chair beside the bed with a book in his hand, while Harold emerged from the bathroom in the middle of brushing his teeth.

“Something the matter, Ms. Shaw?” Harold enquired politely.

Shaw looked from Harold to John, from John to the still-neatly-made bed, then back to Harold again, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Fine,” she snapped. “We’re sorry we gave you shit. Now shut the hell up, we’re trying to sleep.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Ms. Shaw,” said Harold innocently. “But if you find yourself having difficulty sleeping, I would recommend you inquire with Ms. Groves whether she would be willing to loan you her extra pair of earplugs.”

“This was your idea, wasn’t it?” she said accusingly at John, who turned the page of his book with magnificent composure, without even looking at her.

“Sure is awkward when people don’t respect other people’s privacy, isn’t it?” he said with perfect calm, and she stomped out of the room with an irritated sigh.

“You’re an asshole, John Reese!” she tossed over her shoulder as she closed the door.

“Love you too!” he called back, and he could hear her laughing.

Harold climbed into bed and switched off the lamp next to his side of the bed, watching John undress. John could feel Harold’s eyes on him, warm with both affection and desire, and it astonished him all over again, how simple it was, how quickly he roused to him. One glance, this time, that was all it took, and John climbed into bed beside Harold hard and ready.

They tried, they really did. They pulled the covers all the way over their heads and spoke in low whispers and pressed hot mouth to hot mouth when the panting of breath threatened to become heavy enough to be heard. John’s hand found Harold’s cock, savoring the sweet weight of it in his hand, soaking it with lubricant, and clutching it in his fist as he gently straddled Harold and lowered himself down. But it was so hard to be quiet when the man he loved was inside him, it was so hard to be quiet when Harold was looking up at him with dazed, wide-eyed wonder and awe, his mouth parted and his breath ragged as he murmured John’s name over and over and over. It was so hard to be quiet when Harold’s long, smooth, hard cock glided wetly, effortlessly, into the very deepest part of him and stretched him open; when Harold’s deft hands made their way to the place where John’s own erect cock rested heavily against Harold’s stomach, and began to caress him.

John felt the waves begin to rush over him, feeling the magnificent heat inside him begin to grow as his hips rose and fell, rose and fell, bringing Harold deeper inside him with each thrust. Harold began to tremble, and John sank forward, keeping Harold’s cock buried inside him but stretching out along the smaller man’s torso in order to kiss him properly. “John,” Harold sighed as his hips began to buck and stutter beneath John’s, and John seized him swiftly and tightly in protective arms, holding him close, nuzzling wild little kisses into Harold’s throat with a hungry open mouth, as Harold buried his face in John’s shoulder, scratching desperately at his back. “May I come inside you?” he whispered into John’s ear, sending shivers all over John’s body, and he could only nod. Harold’s hand clutched harder against John’s surging, aching cock, which was already beginning to seep glistening liquid, and they came at very nearly the same time. A glorious burst of wetness erupted inside John as Harold came with violent force, shaking and trembling and sighing inside his arms. “Oh, John,” he murmured, and it was his low, dazed, awestruck voice that did it, that finally pushed John over the edge as his cock burst hot and wet inside Harold’s fingers. Harold stroked him down, slow and steady, easing him back to earth, and as their bodies melted stickily together, John kissed Harold’s slack, panting mouth and felt a love so immense that he thought his heart might shatter inside his chest.

“Harold,” he said suddenly, shifting a little to curl up into the side of Harold’s body, like a protective blanket. “When did you know?”

“Know what?”

“About me,” said John. “About . . . the way you felt.”

Harold looked embarrassed. “It will sound foolish,” he warned John, a little awkwardly.

“Bet it won’t.”

“It was years ago,” said Harold. “It was in the library. I was walking one direction and you passed me in the hallway, walking the other direction, and – forgive me, I do realize how hopelessly silly this will sound, but unfortunately it is the only honest answer – your hand, somehow, as we were passing, brushed against mine, just the faintest bit, and I . . . I felt . . . I hardly know what I felt, I suppose. Or at any rate, I hardly knew then. I suppose it came to me later.” He smiled a bit apologetically at John. “I’m so sorry,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I do wish it were a more interesting story. You won’t remember, it was such a small –“

“It was a Monday, in February,” John interrupted, and Harold stared. “Four in the afternoon. It had been raining, and you’d just come in from outside. You were going to make tea.”

“John –“

“You were wearing a light gray three-piece suit,” John went on, “with a pink striped shirt, and your tie was sort of a red-wine color, with stripes in gold thread. Your hair was wet from the rain. There was rain on your glasses.  You saw me coming out of the kitchen as you were walking in and you said, ‘Mr. Reese, can I interest you in a cup of tea?’ and I didn’t want one but I said yes anyway, I can’t remember why, and then as you passed me the back of your left hand touched the back of my right hand.”

“How could you possibly remember all of that?” Harold asked, utterly baffled, and John looked away, suddenly shy. “Oh,” said Harold softly. “Oh. I see.”

John nodded. “Yeah,” he said, a little shyly.

“My goodness,” said Harold. “What a great deal of trouble I could have saved us both if I had kissed you right then, the way I wanted to.”

John smiled. “Kiss me now and make up for it,” he suggested, and Harold did.

John Reese had told himself all his life that he was nothing more than a body. A tool. A pair of hands to hold a gun, a pair of eyes to focus and aim it, a set of instincts to respond in the heat of battle. Just a body. Sometimes a mind, from time to time, when strategy was called for, though not as often. But never a heart – never emotions, passion, loyalty, love – and still less a _soul._ No one had ever told him that the things John Reese had done and the man John Reese actually was were two distinct and separate things. No one had ever told him he could be more than that.

No one had ever looked into his eyes and seen a good man, until Harold Finch. No one had ever seen past the blood on his hands, the dark ugly things he’d done – seen straight past them as though they were shadows only, a faint haze of gray over the beating red heart that was the only part that actually mattered.

And John knew, suddenly and for the very first time, with a white-hot certainty that echoed all the way down to his bones, that he had been wrong about everything. Everything that mattered.

His love for Harold was not a weakness. It was the greatest strength he possessed. He would tear the world apart with his own bare hands if it meant Harold safe in his arms at the end of it, and God help the Samaritan agents who got in his way.

Hector of Troy, the last good man left standing after the enemy had broken and corrupted everybody else.

The story of his life could be told in the list of people and things that, over the years, all the different men John Reese had been were ready and willing to die for.

Something to _live_ for? That was another matter altogether. There was only one name on that list – but it was the only one that mattered.  

 _I will fight the good fight_ , he thought to himself, a surge of something that might be hope pounding in his chest as Harold kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. _I will finish the race._

_I will keep the faith._


End file.
